This paper reconsiders the well-known comparison of equilibrium entry levels into a Cournot industry under free entry, second best (control of entry but not production) and first best (control of entry and production). Allowing for the possibility of limited increasing returns to scale in...

A preference is invariant with respect to a set of transformations if the ranking of acts is unaffected by reshuffling the states under these transformations. For example, transformations may correspond to the set of finite permutations, or the shift in a dynamic choice model. Our main result is...

Smart grid technologies may bring substantial advantages to society, but the required investments are sizable. This paper analyzes three main issues related to smart grids: reliability, demand response and cost recovery of investments. In particular, we show that generators will lose profits as...

Smart Grid (SG) technologies may bring substantial advantages to society, but the required investments are also sizable. This paper establishes a framework for examining the issues related to the SG, and highlights some of the difficulties in establishing a mechanism for paying SG costs. In...

This note questions the behavioral content of second-order acts and their use in decision theoretic models. We show that there can be no verification mechanism to determine what the decision maker receives under a second-order act. This impossibility applies even in idealized repeated...

A parallel of education with transformative processes in standard markets suggest that a more severe control of the quality of the output will improve the overall quality of the education. This paper shows a somehow counterintuitive result: an increase in the exam difficulty may reduce the...

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...

What is the effect of ambiguity aversion on trade? Although in a Bewley's model ambiguity aversion always lead to less trade, in other models this is not always true. However, we show that if the endowments are unambiguous then more ambiguity aversion implies less trade, for a very general class...