On 11 September 2012, the Subcommittee on Healthcare and Technology of the United States House Committee on Small Business led by Chairwoman Renee Ellmers (R-NC) and Ranking Member Cedric Richmond (D-LA) held a hearing on Medicare’s Durable Medical Equipment Competitive Bidding Program, which...

We analyze the implications of different pricing rules in discrete clock auctions. The two most common pricing rules are highest-rejected bid (HRB) and lowest-accepted bid (LAB). Under HRB, the winners pay the lowest price that clears the market; under LAB, the winners pay the highest price that...

The Kyoto summit initiated an international game of cap and trade. Unlike a national policy, the essence of this game is the self-selection of national emission targets. This differs from the standard global public-goods game because targets are met in the context of a global carbon market. This...

Bargaining often occurs between parties with some shared interest. Partnerships, joint ventures, and cross ownership are examples. We extend standard bargaining models to allow for joint ownership. Joint ownership reduces costly bargaining disputes, as bargainers’ interests are more aligned....

Developing countries justifiably reject meaningful emission targets. This prevents the Kyoto Protocol from establishing a global price for greenhouse gas emissions, and leaves almost all new emissions unpriced. This paper proposes a new pair of commitments—a commitment to a binding...

Greenhouse gas abatement is a public good, so climate policy is a public-goods game and suffers from the free-rider incentives that make the outcome of such games notoriously uncooperative. Adopting an international agreement can change the nature of the game, reducing or exacerbating the...

We describe a new approach for selling rough diamonds through competitive auctions. The classical approach of De Beers—giving each customer a bag of stones and a take-it-or-leave-it price—worked well in near monopoly circumstances, but is ill-suited for competitive producers. Competitive...

The purpose of this report is to provide decision makers in Colombia (and by extension other countries or regions), who are considering the deployment or consolidation of wind power, with a set of options to promote its use. The options presented are the result of an analysis of the Colombian...

We analyze the implications of different pricing rules in discrete clock auctions. The two most common pricing rules are highest-rejected bid (HRB) and lowest-accepted bid (LAB). Under HRB, the winners pay the lowest price that clears the market; under LAB, the winners pay the highest price that...

Public discussion has turned, in the past few days, toward using some of the $700 billion in rescue funds for the injection of government money into banks in return for ownership stakes. The purpose of this short note, an addendum to “A Troubled Asset Reverse Auction,” is to describe an...