We characterize the preference domains on which the Borda count satisfies Arrow's ``independence of irrelevant alternatives" condition. Under a weak richness condition, these domains are obtained by fixing one preference ordering and including all its cyclic permutations (``Condorcet cycles")....

We address the scheduling problem of reordering an existing queue into its efficient order through trade. To that end, we consider individually rational and balanced budget direct and indirect mechanisms. We show that this class of mechanisms allows us to form efficient queues provided that...

In mechanism design problems under incomplete information, it is generally difficult to find decision problems that are first best implementable. A decision problem under incomplete information is first best implementable if there exists a mechanism that extracts the private information and...

We consider Kyle's market order model of insider trading with multiple informed traders and show: if a linear equilibrium exists for two different numbers of informed traders, asset payoff and noise trading are independent and have finite second moments, then these random variables are normally...

The topic of insolvency risk in connection with life insurance companies has recently attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, the question is investigated of how the value of the equity and of the liability of a life insurance company are affected by the default risk and the choice...

Turbo-Certificates are one of the most popular structured equity products for private investors in Germany. They can be regarded as special forms of barrier options. The relation between the barrier level and the strike price is especially important for the design of these products. By using a...

We introduce a concept of emotions that emerge when workers compare their own performance with a given standard or with the performances of co-workers. Assuming heterogeneity among the workers the interplay of emotions and incentives is analysed by focusing on three incentive schemes that are...

The paper reports simulations applied on two similar congestion games: the first is the classical minority game. The second one is a asymmetric variation of the minority game with linear payoff functions. For each game simulation results based on an extended reinforcement algorithm are compared...

A model of new-product diffusion is proposed in which a site-percolation dynamics represents socially-driven diffusion of knowledge about the product's characteristics in a population of potential buyers. A consumer buys the new product if her valuation of it is not below the price of the...

We show that the saddle-point approximation method to quantify the impact of undiversi?ed idiosyncratic risk in a credit portfolio is inappropriate in the presence of double default effects. Speci?cally, we prove that there does not exist an equivalent formula to the granularity adjustment, that...