We consider the problem of assigning agents to a facility, represented by slots on a line, where only one agent can be served at a time. There is a finite number of agents, and each one wants to be served as close as possible to his preferred slot. We first consider deterministic assignment of...

We investigate the costs of transportation regulation using the example of agricultural markets in the United States. Using a large database of prices by state of agricultural commodities, we find that dispersion fell for many commodities until the First World War. We demonstrate that this...

We hypothesize that cultural appreciation of hard work and thrift, the "Protestant ethic" according to Max Weber, had a pre-Reformation origin. The proximate source of these values was, according to the proposed theory, the Catholic Order of Cistercians. In support, we document that the...

The influence of life expectancy on schooling is usually thought of as one main mechanism by which life expectancy possibly affects income per capita and thus economic development. However, the relevance of this channel has been qualified in recent research. This paper studies whether life...

With aggregate sales by foreign affiliates exceeding world exports, determinants of FDI patterns have received great attention, while the timing of their surge has been understudied. Recent evidence indicates that transportation costs of goods have fallen too little to explain these figures...

This paper introduces cooperative games arising from multi-depot Chinese postman problems and explores the properties of these games. A multi-depot Chinese postman problem (MDCP) is represented by a connected (di)graph G, a set of k depots that is a subset of the vertices of G, and a...

We analyze a general model of rationing in which agents have baselines, in addition to claims against the (insufficient) endowment of the good to be allocated. Many real-life problems fit this general model (e.g., bankruptcy with prioritized claims, resource allocation in the public health care...

We consider several related set extensions of the core and the anticore of games with transferable utility. An efficient allocation is undominated if it cannot be improved, in a specific way, by sidepayments changing the allocation or the game. The set of all such allocations is called the...

The variable returns to scale data envelopment analysis (DEA) model is developed with a maintained hypothesis of convexity in input-output space. This hypothesis is not consistent with standard microeconomic production theory that posits an S-shape for the production frontier, i.e. for...

Chartist and fundamentalist models have proven to be capable of replicating stylized facts on speculative markets. In general, this is achieved by specifying nonlinear interactions of otherwise linear asset price expectations of the respective trader groups. This paper investigates whether or...