We prove that the English auction (with bidders that need not be ex ante identical and may have interdependent valuations) has an efficient ex post equilibrium. We establish this result for environments where it has not been previously obtained. We also prove two versions of the...

Many studies have shown that people display an apparent overconfidence. In particular, it is common for a majority of people to describe themselves as better-than-average. The literature takes for granted that this better-than-average is problematic. We argue, however, that, even accepting these...

Many studies have shown that people display an apparent overconfidence. In particular, it is common for a majority of people to describe themselves as better than average. The literature takes for granted that this better-than-average effect is problematic. We argue, however, that, even...

Many studies have shown that people display an apparent overconfidence. In particular, it is common for a majority of people to describe themselves as better-than-average. The literature takes for granted that this better-than-average effect is problematic. We argue, however, that, even...

We study axiomatically the problem of obtaining an expected utility representation for a potentially incomplete preference relation over lotteries by means of a set of von Neumann-Morgenstern utility functions. It is shown that, when the prize space is a compact metric space, a preference...

We study the problem of a regulator who must control the emissions of a given pollutant from a series of industries when the firms' abatement costs are unknown. We develop a mechanism in which the regulator asks firms to report their abatement costs and implements the most stringent emissions...

Arrow argues that the biggest failures of economic theory are: our failure to explain the business cycle; the missing explanations for the size of fluctuations of prices; our failure to explain the causes of growth and of the spread of innovation. He then discusses several of the existing...

I introduce a property of player's valuations that ensures the existence of an ex post efficient equilibrium in asymmetric English auctions. The use of this property has the advantage of yielding an ex post efficient equilibrium without assuming differentiability of valuations or that signals...

We conduct a proper test of the claim that people are overconfident, in the sense that they believe that they are better than others. The results of the experiment we present do not allow us to reject the hypotheses that the data has been generated by perfectly rational, unbiased, and...

Many studies have shown that people display an apparent overconfidence. In particular, it is common for a majority of people to describe themselves as better than average. The literature takes for granted that this better-than-average effect is problematic. We argue, however, that, even...