This paper analyzes the optimal size of a deliberating committee where (i) there is no conflict of interest among individuals and (ii) information acquisition is costly. The committee members simultaneously decide whether to acquire information, and then make the ex-post efficient decision. The...

We consider the evolutionary basis of time discounting with intergenerational transfers. We show that the notion of "reproductive value" from biology provides the utility criterion for a parent to optimize the allocation of resources between transfers to offspring and to promote her own...

This paper considers a general, dynamic contracting problem with adverse selection and moral hazard, in which the agent's type stochastically evolves over time. The agent's final payoff depends on the entire history of private and public information, contractible decisions and the agent's hidden...

An important line of recent literature has found gender differences in attitudes toward competition, with men being more likely to choose competitive incentive schemes, even when factors such as ability and risk aversion are controlled for. This paper examines the effect of information on the...

This paper analyzes Bayesian normal form games in which players write contracts that condition their actions on the contracts of the other players. These contracts are required to be representable in a formal language. This is accomplished by constructing contracts which are definable functions...

We reexamine Alan R. Rogers' (1994) analysis of the biological basis of the rate of time preference. Although his basic insight concerning the derivation of the utility function holds up, the functional form he uses does not generate equilibrium evolutionary behavior. Moreover, Rogers relies...