We study a contracting model with unforeseen contingencies in which the court is an active player. Ex-ante, the contracting parties cannot include the risky unforeseen contingencies in the contract they draw up. Ex-post the court observes whether an unforeseen contingency occurred, and decides...

Hayek's (1945) elaboration of the difficulty of aggregating diffuse private knowledge is the best-known articulation of the knowledge problem, and is an example of the difficulty of coordinating individual plans and choices in the ubiquitous and unavoidable presence of dispersed, private,...

How should intermediaries influence the insurance demand decision? The answer must refer to the interdependence of economic determinants and legal duties. Intermediaries potentially guide demand decisions by delivering objective information and by considering individuals' situation and economic...

This paper applies a Hotelling model of two-sided markets in analyzing an emergent approach to marketing textbooks. In this approach, a platform provides the content of electronic textbooks for free. This free content spurs sales of complementary products such as a print version of the textbook....

In this paper, we consider a sequential allocation problem with n individuals. The first individual can consume any amount of a resource, leaving the remainder for the second individual, and so on. Motivated by the limitations associated with the cooperative or non-cooperative solutions, we...

The concede-and-divide rule is a basic solution for bankruptcy problems with two claimants. An extension of the concede-and-divide rule to bankruptcy problems with more than two claimants is provided.This extension not only uses the concede-and-divide principle in its procedural definition, but...

Government or company decisions on whom to hire are mostly delegated to politicians, public sector officials or human resources and procurement managers. Due to anti-corruption laws, agents cannot sell contracts or positions that they are delegated to decide upon. Even if bribing is ruled out,...

Government or company decisions on whom to hire are mostly delegated to politicians, public sector officials or human resources and procurement managers. Due to anti-corruption laws, agents cannot sell contracts or positions that they are delegated to decide upon. Even if bribing is ruled out,...

How can office-seeking politicians or managers be aligned with social welfare or firm welfare, given that such agents have a suboptimal incentive to cater to majority preferences in situations with low participation costs and to elite preferences in situations with high participation costs? In...

In traditional mediation the role of the mediator has been defined as "[A] form of facilitated negotiation in which an impartial third party attempts to help disputing parties reach a mutually satisfactory solution to their problems, without the element of compulsion." Mediators are generally...