We investigate situations in which agents can communicate to each other only through a chain of intermediators, for example, because they have to obey institutionalized communication protocols. We assume that all involved in the communication are strategic and might want to influence the action...

We propose a criterion of approximate incentive compatibility, strategy-proofness in the large (SP-L), and argue that it is a useful second-best to exact strategy-proofness (SP) for market design. Conceptually, SP-L requires that an agent who regards a mechanism's “prices” as exogenous to...

Standard auction formats feature either an upper bound on the equilibrium price that descends over time (as in the Dutch auction) or a lower bound on the equilibrium price that ascends over time (as in the English auction). We show that, in some settings with costly information acquisition,...

The endowment effect, the tendency to value possessions more than non-possessions, is a well known departure from rational choice and has been replicated in numerous settings. We investigate the universality of the endowment effect, its evolutionary significance, and its dependence on...

In an economy with indivisible goods, a continuum of agents and quasilinear utility, we show that equilibrium exists regardless of the nature of agents' preferences over bundles. This contrasts with results for economies with a finite number of agents, which require restrictions on preferences...