“Buy local” arrangements encourage members of a community or group to patronize one another rather than the external economy. They range from formal mechanisms such as local currencies to informal “I’ll buy from you if you buy from me” arrangements, and are often championed on social...

We use the theory of abstract convexity to study adverse-selection principal-agent problems and two-sided matching problems, departing from much of the literature by not requiring quasilinear utility. We formulate and characterize a basic underlying implementation duality. We show how this...

Different markets are cleared by different types of prices -- seller-specific prices that are uniform across buyers in some markets, and personalized prices tailored to the buyer in others. We examine a setting in which buyers and sellers make investments before matching in a competitive market....

We present a model of inductive inference that includes, as special cases, Bayesian reasoning, case-based reasoning, and rule-based reasoning. This unified framework allows us to examine, positively or normatively, how the various modes of inductive inference can be combined and how their...

A large literature uses matching models to analyze markets with two-sided heterogeneity, studying problems such as the matching of students to schools, residents to hospitals, husbands to wives, and workers to firms. The analysis typically assumes that the agents have complete information, and...

We study a discrete-time model of repeated moral hazard without commitment. In every period, a principal finances a project, choosing the scale of the project and a contingent payment plan for an agent, who has the opportunity to appropriate the returns of a successful project unbeknownst the...

We examine a repeated interaction between an agent, who undertakes experiments, and a principal who provides the requisite funding for these experiments. The agent’s actions are hidden, and the principal cannot commit to future actions. The repeated interaction gives rise to a dynamic agency...

We examine a repeated interaction between an agent, who undertakes experiments, and a principal who provides the requisite funding for these experiments. The repeated interaction gives rise to a dynamic agency cost — the more lucrative is the agent’s stream of future rents following a...

We propose a formal model of scientific modeling, geared to applications of decision theory and game theory. The model highlights the freedom that modelers have in conceptualizing social phenomena using general paradigms in these fields. It may shed some light on the distinctions between (i)...

We study markets in which agents first make investments and are then matched into potentially productive partnerships. Equilibrium investments and the equilibrium matching will be efficient if agents can simultaneously negotiate investments and matches, but we focus on markets in which agents...