Maskin and Riley (2003) and Lebrun (2006) prove that the Bayes-Nash equilibrium of �rst-price auctions is unique. This uniqueness requires the assumption that a buyer never bids above his value. We demonstrate that, in asymmetric �rst-price auctions (with or without a minimum bid), the...

Experimental economics methods were used to assess public understanding of information in weather forecasts and test whether the participants were able to make better decisions using the probabilistic information presented in table or bar graph formats than if they are presented with a...

Economists and other applied researchers use game theory to study industrial organization, financial markets, and the theory of the firm. In an earlier article in the Mathematica Journal, [Dickhaut and Kaplan 1991] present a procedure for solving two-person games of complete information. In many...

This paper examines the issue of whether workers learn productive skills from their co-workers, even if those skills are unethical. Specifically, we estimate whether Jose Canseco, a star baseball player in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, affected the performance of his teammates by introducing...

In this paper, we use experimental economics methods to test how well Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) fares as a choice support system in a real decision problem. AHP provides a ranking that we statistically compare with three additional rankings given by the subjects in the experiment: one at...

We examine an environment with n voters each with a private value over two alternatives. We compare the social surplus of two mechanisms for deciding between them: majority voting and shouting. In majority voting, the choice with the most votes wins. With shouting, the voter who shouts the...

This paper models a contest where several sellers compete for a contract with a single buyer. There are several styles of possible designs with a subset of them preferred by the buyer. We examine what happens when the buyer communicates information about his preferences. If the sellers are...

The hold-up problem is central to the theory of incomplete contracts. It shows how the difficulty to write complete contracts and the resulting need to renegotiate can lead to underinvestment. We describe the design of a simple teaching experiment that illustrates the hold-up problem. The model...

Using contests to generate innovation has and is widely used. Such contests often involve offering a prize that depends upon the accomplishment (effort). Using an all-pay auction as a model of a contest, we determine the optimal reward for inducing innovation. In a symmetric environment, we find...

We describe a simple 2-stage mechanism that induces two bargainers to be truthful in reporting their reservation prices in a 1st stage. If these prices criss-cross, the referee reports that they overlap, and the bargainers proceed to make offers in a 2nd stage. The average of the 2nd-stage...