The use of lotteries is advocated to desegregate schools. We study lottery quotas embedded in the two most common school choice mechanisms, namely deferred and immediate acceptance mechanisms. Some seats are allocated based on merit (e.g., grades) and some based on lottery draws. We focus on the...

In school choice problems, the widely used manipulable Immediate Acceptance mechanism (IA) disadvantages unsophisticated applicants, but may ex-ante Pareto dominate any strategy-proof alternative. In these cases, it may be preferable to aid applicants within IA, rather than to abandon it. In a...

We study the problem of assigning indivisible objects to agents where each is to receive one object. To ensure fairness in the absence of monetary compensation, we consider random assignments. Random Priority, also known as Random Serial Dictatorship, is characterized by symmetry, ex-post...

This paper considers terrorism as an extortion activity. It uses tools from the theory of extortion and from conflict theory to describe how terrorism works, why terrorism is a persistent phenomenon, why terrorism is a violent phenomenon, and how retaliation affects the outcome. The analysis...

Altruists and envious people who meet in contests are symbionts. They do better than a population of narrowly rational individuals. If there are only altruists and envious individuals, a particular mixture of altruists and envious individuals is evolutionarily stable.

We analyze the incidence and welfare effects of unit sales taxes in experimental monopoly and Bertrand markets. We find, in line with economic theory, that firms with no market power are able to shift a high share of a tax burden on to consumers, independent of whether buyers are automated or...

We present a laboratory experiment on the impact of price framing on consumer decision making. Consumer subjects face a search market where two sellers offer a homogenous good. We examine six different price frames with linear per-unit pricing (that is displayed as such) serving as a benchmark....

We study markets for sensitive personal information. An agent wants to communicate with another party but any revealed information can be intercepted and sold to a third party whose reaction harms the agent. The market for information induces an adverse sorting effect, allocating the information...

We study how subjects in an experiment use different forms of public information about their opponents' past behavior. In the absence of public information, subjects appear to use rather detailed statistics summarizing their private experiences. If they have additional public information, they...

While people on all sides of the political spectrum were amazed that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination this paper demonstrates that Trump's victory was not a crazy event but rather the equilibrium outcome of a multi-candidate race where one candidate, the buffoon, is viewed as likely to...