This paper addresses the selection problem in promotion tournaments. I consider a situation with heterogeneous employees and ask whether an employer might be interested in repeating a promotion tournament. On the one hand, this yields a reduction in uncertainty over the employees` abilities. On...

We propose a simple mechanism that might improve voluntary contributions to public goods. Using a laboratory experiment we analyze how bundling public with private goods affects individuals' valuations for both goods. In the experiment, subjects may purchase a private and a public good either...

In an independent private value auction environment, we are interested in strategy-proof mechanisms that maximize the agents' residual surplus, that is, the utility derived from the physical allocation minus transfers accruing to an external entity. We find that, under the assumption of an...

Hotelling’s famous ‘Principle of Minimum Differentiation’ asserts that two firms engaging in spatial competition with fixed prices will decide to locate at the same place. Interpreting spatial competition as modeling product differentiation, firms will thus offer products that are not...

In multi-attribute procurement auctions with multiple objects, the auctioneer may care about the interplay of quality attributes that do not belong to the same item – like each item’s delivery time, if all items are needed at once. This can in?uence the performance of the auction mechanism....

We develop a model of assignment games with pairwise-identity-dependent externalities. A concept of conjectural equilibrium is proposed, and the universal conjecture is shown to be the necessary and sufficient condition for the general existence of equilibrium. We then apply the solution concept...

We add an extractive sector to an endogenous growth model of expanding varieties and directed technological change. Extractive rms reduce the stock of non-renewable resources through extraction, but also increase the stock through R&D investment in extraction technology. Our model replicates...

Official lenders provide financial assistance to countries that face sovereign debt crisis. The availability of financial assistance has counteracting effects on the default incentives of governments. On the one hand, financial assistance can help to avoid defaults by bridging times of...

One of the roots of the recent global financial crisis has been seen in the design of subprime mortgage contract leading to high sensitivity of such type of loans to house price changes. The market of subprime loans, especially in the last years preceding the crisis, has been highly financed by...

In this paper we analyze European business cycles before and under EMU. Across the two periods we ?nd 1) a signi?cant decline in real exchange rate volatility, 2) signi?cant changes in cross-country correlations, and 3) the volatility of macroeconomic fundamentals largely un- changed. We develop...