It is commonly believed that, since unanimity rule safeguards the rights of each individual, it protects minorities from the possibility of expropriation, thus yielding more equitable outcomes than majority rule. We show that this is not necessarily the case in bargaining environments. We study...

This paper addresses the fundamental question of whether, in a comparative-advantage context, the gains from trade will be greater when the differences between trading countries are greater. Such a presumption is established. The paper then discusses circumstances that could cause the...

Much of the literature on mechanism design and implementation uses the revelation principle to restrict attention to direct mechanisms. This is without loss of generality in a well defined sense. It is, however, restrictive if one is concerned with the set of equilibria, if one is concerned...

We showed in McLean and Postlewaite (2014) that when agents are informationally small, there exist small modifications to VCG mechanisms in interdependent value problems that restore incentive compatibility. This paper presents a two-stage mechanism that similarly restores incentive...

It is well-known that the ability of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism to implement efficient outcomes for private value choice problems does not extend to interdependent value problems. When an agent's type affects other agents' utilities, it may not be incentive compatible for him to...

It is well-known that the ability of the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism to implement efficient outcomes for private value choice problems does not extend to interdependent value problems. When an agent's type affects other agents' utilities, it may not be incentive compatible for him to...

A single unit of a good is to be sold by auction to one of many potential buyers. There are two equally likely states of the world. Potential buyers receive noisy signals of the state of the world. The accuracies of buyers signals may differ. A buyers valuation is the sum of a common value...

This paper studies inference in a continuous time game where an agent's decision to quit an activity depends on the participation of other players. In equilibrium, similar actions can be explained not only by direct influences but also by correlated factors. Our model can be seen as a...

There is a large repeated games literature illustrating how future interactions provide incentives for cooperation. Much of the earlier literature assumes public monitoring. Departures from public monitoring to private monitoring that incorporate differences in players’ observations may...

There is a large repeated games literature illustrating how future interactions provide incentives for cooperation. Much of the earlier literature assumes public monitoring: players always observe precisely the same thing. Departures from public monitoring to private monitoring that incorporate...