An agent advises a principal on selecting one of multiple projects or an outside option. The agent is privately informed about the projects' benefits and shares the principal's preferences except for not internalizing her value from the outside option. We show that for moderate outside option...

Randomization is commonplace in everyday resource allocation. We generalize the theory of randomized assignment to accommodate multi-unit allocations and various real-world constraints, such as group-specific quotas ("controlled choice") in school choice and house allocation, and scheduling and...

We examine the effect of speculation using credit derivatives on the cost of debt and the likelihood of default. The availability of credit default swaps induces investors who are optimistic about borrower revenues to sell protection instead of buying bonds. This benefits borrowers if protection...

Gale-Shapley's deferred acceptance (henceforth DA) mechanism has emerged as a prominent candidate for placing students to public schools. While DA has desirable fairness and incentive properties, it limits the applicants' abilities to communicate their preference intensities, which entails ex...

Peter DeMarzo, Ilan Kremer and Andrzej Skrzypacz (2005, henceforth DKS) analyzed auctions in which bidders compete in securities. They show that a steeper security leads to a higher expected revenue for the seller, and also use this to establish the revenue ranking between standard auctions. In...

The Boston mechanism is among the most popular school choice pro- cedures in use. Yet, the mechanism has been criticized for its poor incentive and welfare performances, which led the Boston Public Schools to recently replace it with Gale and Shapley's deferred acceptance algorithm (henceforth,...