Lump-sum rebates can protect price-discriminators against reselling. Large customers, however, can bargain for a larger rebate. This paper shows how sellers can make a credible commitment to not bargain: a price discriminating formula is published as a Most-Favoured-Customer (MFC) contract: if...

Despite its abandonment in theoretical work, a literature search shows that variation in consumer surplus (VCS) is the overwhelming choice in applied work -- not compensating variation (CV) or equivalent variation (EV). How can this be explained? Besides the obvious ease of computation, there...

The authors present a classroom experiment designed to illustrate key concepts of third-degree price discrimination. By participating as buyers and sellers, students actively learn (1) how group pricing differs from uniform pricing,(2) how resale between buyers limits a seller's ability to price...

In this paper, the relation between inequality and welfare index "reversals" is characterized. By the identification of these reversals, upper and lower bounds are established for Atkinson's parameter of inequality aversion. This exercise shows that a level of inequality aversion high enough to...

The Condorcet paradox is a classic example of the power of agenda setting how it can determine the political outcome. A classroom voting game shows how alliances between voting blocs can determine an agenda. Agreements on how to vote after the agenda is set will be broken, however, if the...

The Swiss Wirtschaftsring ("Economic Circle") credit network, founded in 1934, provides residual spending power that is highly counter-cyclical. Individuals are cash-short in a recession, and economize by greater use of WIR-credits. A money in the production function (MIPF) specification implies...

Centralized exchange has a worst-case size-complexity many orders of magnitude lower than decentralized monetary exchange. As long as its computational limits are not exceeded, therefore, a centralized exchange may approach Pareto-efficiency more rapidly than a decentralized exchange. Wealth...

Centralized exchange has a worst-case size-complexity many orders of magnitude lower than decentralized monetary exchange for the same number of agents and goods. A more rapid approach to competitive equilibrium may therefore be possible through centralized exchange. An additional benefit of...

The sub-optimal "meliorating" behavior studied by Herrnstein shows that all known animal species match average and not marginal payoffs. When information processing is costly, Herrnstein’s matching and a similar simplifying "paradox" discovered by Allais may be efficient for agents averse to...