We analyse the all-pay auction with incomplete information and variance-averse bidders. We characterise the unique symmetric equilibrium for general distributions of valuations and any number of bidders. Variance aversion is a sufficient assumption to predict that high-valuation bidders increase...

Conventional wisdom says that economic surplus is created when the cost of litigation is foregone in favor of settlement, a theory flowing from the Coase Theorem. The cost-benefit analysis weighs settlement against the expected value of litigation net of transaction cost. This calculus yields...

Suppose that a group of agents having divergent expectations can share risks efficiently. We examine how this group should behave collectively to manage these risks. We show that the beliefs of the representative agent is in general a function of the group.s wealth level, or equivalently, that...

This paper presents a mathematical model to evaluate the risks of arbitration in contractual disputes to decide whether or not to raise an arbitration case for a claim. It adds the ingredient of a regret theory approach for taking that decision, if an amicable settlement amount is not agreed....

This chapter studies how incomplete information helps accommodate frictions in coordination, leading to novel insights on the joint determination of expectations and macroeconomic outcomes. We review and synthesize recent work on global games, beauty contests, and their applications. We...

We characterize a firm's optimal factor adjustment when any number of factors face "kinked" linear adjustment costs so that all factor accumulation is costly to reverse. We first consider a general non-stationary case with a concave operating profit function, unrestricted form of uncertainty and...