We analyze equally competitive spouses competing for promotion in their respective workplaces and show that an asymmetric equilibrium featuring household specialization can arise. Examples where the asymmetric equilibrium is welfare-superior to the symmetric equilibrium are highlighted. By...

We analyse procurement auctions in which sellers are distinguished on the basis of the ratios of quality per unit of money that they offer. Sellers are privately informed on the offered quality of the technology or good. We assume that the procurer cannot perfectly identify the best offer. Thus,...

A budget-constrained buyer wants to purchase items from a shortlisted set. Items are differentiated by observable quality and sellers have private reserve prices for their items. The buyer's problem is to select a subset of maximal quality. Money does not enter the buyer's objective function,...

Overbidding in second-price auctions (SPAs) has been shown to be persistent and associated with cognitive ability. We study experimentally to what extent cross-game learning can reduce overbidding in SPAs, taking into account cognitive skills. Employing an order-balanced design, we use...

We revisit the classical result that financing a pure public good through taxation of private consumption is inefficient. To this standard setup we add a consumption contest in which consumers can win a prize. We show that an appropriately chosen contest - which we call a 'tax lottery' - can...

Overbidding in second-price auctions (SPAs) has been shown to be persistent and associated with cognitive ability. We study experimentally to what extent cross-game learning can reduce overbidding in SPAs, taking into account cognitive skills. Employing an order-balanced design, we use...

We study decision making processes with non-standard all-pay structures. We motivate this interest through a group of regulatory, political, legal, military, and economic applications where individual actions determine the consequences for a larger group or the public. The common features of...

We develop a general framework for studying contests, including the well-known models of Tullock (1980) and Lazear & Rosen (1981) as special cases. The contest outcome depends on players' efforts and skills, the latter being subject to symmetric uncertainty. The model is tractable, because...