Many new products (e.g., weapons systems) require substantial innovative effort by suppliers. Procurement of effort through bilateral contracting is often problematic, however, because the effort may be unverifiable and cooperative. That is, a third party cannot verify the level of effort, and...

This paper develops a methodology for characterizing expected revenue from auctions when bidders' types come from an arbitrary distribution. In particular, types may be multidimensional, and there may be mass points in the distribution. One application extends existing revenue equivalence...

Yeon-Koo Che and Ian Gale (1998) studied the impact of imposing a cap on lobbying expenditures. They showed that a cap may lead to (1) greater expected aggregate expenditures and (2) a less efficient allocation of a political prize. In their comment, Todd Kaplan and David Wettstein (2005) show...

This paper develops a methodology for characterizing expected revenue from auctions when bidders' types come from an arbitrary distribution. In particular, types may be multidimensional, and there may be mass points in the distribution. One application extends existing revenue equivalence...

An analysis of the impact of binding budget constraints on the expected revenue generated by sealed-bid and oral auctions, showing that revenue is higher in the former case.

The cost of political campaigns in the U.S. has risen substantially in recent years. For example, real spending on congressional election campaigns doubled between 1976 and 1992 (Steven D. Levitt [1995]). There are many reasons why increased campaign spending might be socially harmful. First,...

Procurement of an innovation often requires substantial effort by potential suppliers. Motivating effort may be difficult if the level of effort and quality of the resulting innovation are unverifiable, if innovators cannot benefit directly by marketing their innovations, and if the buyer cannot...