This paper establishes that the optimal stopping time of virtually any optimal stopping problem is increasing in "patience," understood as a particular partial order on discount rate functions. With Markov dynamics, the result holds in a continuation- domain sense even if stopping is combined...

Affiliation has been a prominent assumption in the study of economic models with statistical dependence. Despite its large number of applications, especially in auction theory, affiliation has limitations that are important to be aware of. This paper shows that affiliation is a restrictive...

We present a model for the equilibrium movement of capital between asset markets that are distinguished only by the levels of capital invested in each. Investment in that market with the greatest amount of capital earns the lowest risk premium. Intermediaries optimally trade off the costs of...

The paper introduces a notion of complementarity (substitutability) of two signals which requires that in all decision problems each signal becomes more (less) valuable when the other signal becomes available. We provide a general characterization which relates complementarity and...

I study the optimal supply of exible commitment devices to people who value both commitment and exibility, and whose preferences exhibit varying degrees of time incon- sistency. I …nd that, if time inconsistency is observable, then both a monopolist and a planner supply devices that enable each...

We consider a federation in which citizens determine by federal majority rule a discretionary policy space which partially restricts the sovereignty of member states. Citizens first vote on the size of the discretionary space (the degree of local discretion), and then on its location on the...

This paper takes a mechanism design approach to federalism and assumes that local preferences are the private information of local jurisdictions. Contractual federalism is defined as a strategy-proof contract among the members of the federation supervised by a benevolent but not omniscient...

Orderings of interdependence among random variables are useful in many economic contexts, for example, in assessing ex post inequality under uncertainty; in comparing multidimensional inequality; in valuing portfolios of assets or insurance policies; and in assessing systemic risk. We explore...

How does renegotiation affect contracts between a principal and an agent subject to persistent private information and moral hazard? This paper introduces a concept of renegotiation-proofness, which adapts to stochastic games the concepts of weak renegotiation-proofness and internal consistency...

This paper analyzes an ongoing bargaining situation in which i) preferences evolve overtime, ii) the interests of individuals are not perfectly aligned, and iii) the previous agreement becomes the next status quo and determines the payoffs until a new agreement is reached. We show that the...