In a laboratory experiment, we investigate the impact of temporary buy-options on efficiency, revenues, and bidding behavior in online proxy-auctions when bidders have independent private valuations. We show that the introduction of a buy-option reduces efficiency and at the same time fails to...

Real-world contests are often "unfair" in the sense that outperforming all rivals may not be enough to be the winner, because some contestants are favored by the allocation rule, while others are handicapped. Examples of such contests can be inter alia found in the area of litigation and...

We consider optimal contracts when a principal has two sources to detect bad projects. The first one is an information technology without agency costs ($%IT_{P}$), whereas the second one is the expertise of an agent subject to moral hazard, adverse selection and limited liability ($IT_A$)....

We consider several notions of setwise stability for many-to-many matching markets with contracts and provide an analysis of the relations between the resulting stable sets and pairwise stable sets for general, substitutable, and strongly substitutable preferences. Apart from obtaining “set...

This paper reports on a laboratory experiment which investigates the impact of institutions and institutional choice in constant-sum sender-receiver games. We compare individual sender and receiver behavior in two different institutions: A sanction-free institution which is given by the bare...

We consider multiple-type housing markets. To capture the dynamic aspect of trade in such markets, we study a dynamic recontracting process similar to the one introduced by Serrano and Volij (2005). First, we analyze the set of recurrent classes of this process as a (non-empty) solution concept....

In this note we extend Jackson and WattsJET2002''s result on the coincidence of S-stochastically stable and core stable networks from the marriage problem to the solvable roommate problem. In particular, we show that the polarization structure of the marriage problem on which the proof of...

This paper analyzes a learning model where sophisticated market designers create new trading platforms and boundedly rational traders select among them. We ask wether "Walrasian'''' platforms, leading to efficient (market - clearing) trading outcomes, will dominate the market in the long run. If...

We show that for any roommate market the set of stochastically stable matchings coincideswith the set of absorbing matchings. This implies that whenever the core is non-empty (e.g.,for marriage markets), a matching is in the core if and only if it is stochastically stable, i.e., stochastic...

We develop a model that allows for a comparison of corporate leniency programs for cartel behavior as enacted e.g. in the USA and the EU. Although all programs are based on the idea that the ex ante expected fine can be increased by granting fine reductions for self-reporting firms, these...