In a market in which sellers compete for heterogeneous buyers by posting mechanisms, we analyze how the properties of the meeting technology affect the allocation of buyers to sellers. We show that a separate submarket for each type of buyer is the efficient outcome if and only if meetings are...

We study experimentally the effect of bargaining power in two sequential mechanisms that offer the possibility to trade at a fixed price before an auction. In the "Buy-It-Now" format, the seller has the bargaining power and offers a price prior to the auction; whereas in the "Sell-It-Now"...

In many markets, sellers advertise their good with an asking price. This is a price at which the seller is willing to take his good off the market and trade immediately, though it is understood that a buyer can submit an offer below the asking price and that this offer may be accepted if the...

The undersupply of spots in German daycare facilities for toddlers challenges parents' possibilities to work. To ease the situation, the government implemented a new law entitling every child between ages one and three to daycare supervision for about four hours per day. Nevertheless, the...

The form of contests for a single fixed prize can be determined by a designer who maximizes the contestants' efforts. This paper establishes that, under common knowledge of the two asymmetric contestants' prize valuations, a fair Tullock-type endogenously determined lottery is always superior to...

We consider a labor market with search frictions in which workers make multiple applications and firms can post and commit to general mechanisms that may be conditioned both on the number of applications received and on the number of offers received by its candidate. When the contract space...

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists of three procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren", "Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on...

Existing experimental research on behavior in weakest-link games shows overwhelmingly the inability of people to coordinate on the efficient equilibrium, especially in larger groups. We hypothesize that people are able to coordinate on efficient outcomes, provided they have sufficient freedom to...

Although relative performance schemes are pervasive in organizations reliable empirical data on induced sabotage behavior is almost non-existent. We study sabotage in tournaments in a controlled laboratory experiment and are able to confirm one of the key insights from theory: effort and...

Volunteer supply is widespread, yet without a price inefficiencies occur due to suppliers' inability to coordinate with each other and with demand. For these contexts, we propose a market clearinghouse mechanism that improves efficiency if supply is altruistically provided. The mechanism, a...