This paper introduces the concept of ordient for binary relations (prefer-ences), a relative of the concept of gradient for functions (utilities). The mainmotivation for this study is to replace the binary relation at the center stageof economic analysis, rather than its representation (whenever...

This paper introduces a new solution concept, a minimax regret equilibrium, which allows for the possibility that players are uncertain about the rationality and conjectures of their opponents. We provide several applications of our concept. In particular, we consider price-setting environments...

We show how to bid in first-price auctions when a bidder knows her own value but not how others will bid. To do this we introduce a novel and general method for how to make choices in strategic settings without assuming common knowledge or equilibrium behavior. Accordingly, first eliminate...

Beating the play is a novel method for how to play a simultaneous move game without conjectures about how others play the game. A strategy beats the play if its payoff is higher than when playing like others play the game, regardless of how they play the game. Only Nash equilibrium strategies of...

When should one pay the ferryman? When to pay for the delivery of a good and how to invest in a public good if there is a single transaction and institutions are costly? We show how to solve the hold-up problem. The idea is to appropriately split up the desired total contribution into several...

A natural way to obtain information about the concentration and dispersion of an expert's beliefs is to ask for a confidence interval. Our objective is to design an elicitation mechanism that rewards the expert on the basis of the realized event and satisfies a set of desirable properties. We...

We present a new method for constructing exact distribution-free tests (and confidence intervals) for variables that can generate more than two possible outcomes. This method separates the search for an exact test from the goal to create a non- randomized test. Randomization is used to extend...

We present an exact test for whether two random variables that have known bounds on their support are negatively correlated. The alternative hypothesis is that they are not negatively correlated. No assumptions are made on the underlying distributions. We show by example that the Spearman rank...

We consider the problem of pricing a single object when the seller has only minimal information about the true valuation of the buyer. Specifically, the seller only knows the support of the possible valuations and has no further distributional information.The seller is solving this choice...