How and why does the firm size distribution differ across countries? This paper documents that features of the firm size distribution are strongly associated with income per capita. Richer countries have fewer entrepreneurs and fewer small firms. The average, dispersion and skewness of firm size...

We show that every additively representable comparative probability order on n atoms is determined by at least n - 1 binary subset comparisons. We show that there are many orders of this kind, not just the lexicographic order. These results provide answers to two questions of Fishburn et al...

This paper examines a dynamic game of exploitation of a common pool of some renewable asset by agents that sell the result of their exploitation on an oligopolistic market. A Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium of the game is used to analyze the effects of a merger of a subset of the agents. We...

A choice function is backwards-induction rationalizable if there exists a finite perfect-information extensive-form game such that, for each subset of alternatives, the backwards-induction outcome of the restriction of the game to that subset of alternatives coincides with the choice from that...

Kin selection theorists argue that evolution in social contexts will lead organisms to behave as if maximizing their inclusive, as opposed to personal, fitness. The inclusive fitness concept allows biologists to treat organisms as akin to rational agents seeking to maximize a utility function....

Single-plateaued preferences generalize single-peaked preferences by allowing for multiple best elements. These preferences have played an important role in areas such as voting, strategy-proofness and matching problems. We examine the notion of singleplateauedness in a choice-theoretic setting....

There is a growing interest in multi-sector models that combine aggregate balanced growth, consistent with the well-known Kaldor facts, with systematic changes in the relative importance of each sector, consistent with the Kuznets facts. Although variations in the income elasticity of demand...

We compute the optimal non-linear tax policy for a dynastic economy with uninsurable risk, where generations are linked by dynastic wealth accumulation and correlated incomes. Unlike earlier studies, we find that the optimal long-run tax policy is moderately regressive. Regressive taxes lead to...

A wide variety of choice behavior inconsistent with preference maximization can be explained by Manzini and Mariotti's Rational Shortlist Methods. Choices are made by sequentially applying a pair of asymmetric binary relations (rationales) to eliminate inferior alternatives. Manzini and...

Recent empirical research has documented the importance of shocks to firmspecific productivity, but has provided only limited evidence on their sources. This paper proposes and analyzes purposeful experimentation by firms as a source of such shocks and models industry dynamics in such a setting....