We develop a model of college assignment as a large contest wherein students with heterogeneous abilities compete for seats at vertically differentiated colleges through the acquisition of productive human capital. We use a continuum model to approximate the outcomes of a game with large, but...

I provide a brief introduction to the early literatures on Matching, Auctions, and Market Design.The design of matching markets and auctions has brought economic theory and practice together. Indeed, this is an area where microeconomic theory has had its largest direct impact. This is in part...

Internet auctions are an important resource in the business-to-business (B2B) market for companies that want to save money and increase profits. Understanding how auctions work on the Internet is mandatory in today's marketplace. Auctions can be used to do everything from selling excess...

We formalize an econometric model for two-sided matching mechanisms in a school choice context, where exogenous variation is generated by using lotteries as a tie-breaking mechanism. Our model accommodates a wide range of matching algorithms studied in the theoretical market design literature....

A principal uses security bid auctions to award an incentive contract to one among several agents, in the presence of hidden action and hidden information. Securities range from cash to equity and call options. 'Steeper' securities are better surplus extractors that narrow the gap between the...