A seller wishes to sell an object to one of multiple bidders. The valuations of the bidders are privately known. We consider the joint design problem in which the seller can decide the accuracy by which bidders learn their valuation and to whom to sell at what price. We establish that optimal...

A decision maker has to choose one of several random variables, with uncertainty known distributions. As a Bayesian she behaves as if she knew the distributions. In his paper we suggest an axiomatic derivation of these (subjective) distributions, which is much more economical than the...

This paper considers the financing of a research project under uncertainty about the time of completion and the probability of eventual success. We distinguish between two financing modes, namely relationship financing, where the allocation decision of the entrepreneur is observable, and arm's...

Different electoral rules provide different incentives for parties competing for votes to adopt emerging issues. As a result, new societal issues will be integrated at different speeds into the political arena, and ultimately, into policy. In order to study this question formally, I propose an...

This paper analyzes the entry of new products into vertically differentiated markets where an entrant and an incumbent compete in quantities. The value of the new product is initially uncertain and new information is generated through purchases in the market. We derive the (unique) Markov...

We consider a principal who is keen to induce his agents to work at their maximal effort levels. To this end, he samples n days at random out of the T days on which they work, and awards a prize of B dollars to the most productive agent. The principal's policy (B,n) induces a strategic game...

It is well known that a one-step scoring estimator that starts from any N^{1/2}-consistent estimator has the same first-order asymptotic efficiency as the maximum likelihood estimator. This paper extends this result to k-step estimators and test statistics for k = 1, higher-order asymptotic...

Asymptotic properties of the local Whittle estimator in the nonstationary case (d > 1/2) are explored. For 1/2 < d < 1, the estimator is shown to be consistent, and its limit distribution and the rate of convergence depend on the value of d. For d = 1, the limit distribution is mixed normal. For d > 1 and when the process has a linear trend, the estimator is shown to be inconsistent and to converge in probability to unity.

Inventory models customarily assume that demand is fully satisfied if sufficient stock is available. We analyze the form of the optimal inventory policy if the inventory manager can choose to meet a fraction of the demand. Under classical conditions we show that the optimal policy is again of...

Estimation of the memory parameter in time series with long range dependence is considered. A pooled log periodogram regression estimator is proposed that utilizes a set of mL periodogram ordinates with L approaching infinity rather than m ordinates used in the conventional log periodogram...