Economic theory offers two different approaches to the analysis of group formation and the role of institutions. The general equilibrium approach explores the influence of the economic environment on the formation of groups. The game theoretic approach runs in the opposite direction; it explores...

A celebrated result of Black (1984a) demonstrates the existence of a simple majority winner when preferences are single-peaked. The social choice follows the preferences of the median voter's most preferred outcome beats any alternative. However, this conclusion does not extend to elections in...

Home equity is the single largest component of household wealth for the majority of American households. Yet, there is virtually no way for the average family to insure itself against drops in home value and the ensuing destructive financial loss. Much of U.S. housing policy has focused on...

The authors present a new approach to the theory of imperfect competition and apply it to study price competition among differentiated products. The central result provides general conditions for existence and uniqueness of a pure-strategy price equilibrium given any number of firms producing...

We present a new approach to the theory of imperfect competition and apply it to study price competition among differentiated products. The central result provides general conditions under which there exists a pure strategy price equilibrium for any number of firms producing any set of products....

A celebrated result of D. Black (1948) demonstrates the existence of a simple-majority winner when preferences are single-peaked. This paper provides a multidimensional analog of Black's median voter result. The authors provide conditions under which the mean voter's most preferred outcome is...