We study the agenda selection problem faced by a multi-issue committee when there can be (small) delays between the negotiations of different issues. We show that the presence of these delays affects the interplay of the forces in the bargaining game and solves the indeterminacy of equilibria....

In order to incorporate demand interdependencies into the analysis of fairness between the different consumer groups of a multi-product public utility, Baumol (1986) designed the burden test. This test checks whether the price of a single good generates net incremental revenues which cover at...

We analyze endogenous lobby formation within a slightly modified version of the "special interest politics" model of Persson (1998). In our model the interest groups hold different fixed endowments of an "infrastructure good" which is a complement in consumption of the local public good. For any...

We present a model of cooperative production in which rational agents might carry out sabotage activities that decrease output. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a Nash equilibrium without sabotage. It is shown that the absence of sabotage in equilibrium depends...

This paper characterizes the utility possibility frontier resulting in a model of private voluntary provision of a public good. It is shown that ex-ante lotteries over resource distributions among the agents can be Pareto improving. A corollary is that an equal distribution of resources among...

Analyses of risk-bearing often assume that agents face only one risk. Agents however usually face several risks and the interaction between them can affect the willingness to bear any one of them. We consider how the introduction of background risk affects the comparative statics predictions of...

We analyze two robust portfolio selection models, where a mean-variance investor considers possible deviations from a reference distribution of asset returns, adopting a maxmin criterion. The two models differ in the metric used to measure the distance between the reference distribution of asset...

This paper considers the optimality of setting a secret reserve price in ascending auctions. Contrary to intuition, an ascending auction is no longer equivalent to a second price auction when the reserve price is secret. We determine the seller's optimal reserve price policy when the bidders'...

We consider a monopoly producing a good whose demand grows over time. Whatever the price policy which is adopted, the monopolist invests in order to meet the resulting demand growth. She can only invest in indivisible factory units. We identify the optimal price policy, and the ensuing optimal...

Allaz (1992) and Allaz and Vila (1993) show that in an oligopolistic industry the introduction of a futures market that operates prior to the spot market induces more competitive outcomes. Hughes and Kao (1997) show that this result presumes that firms' future positions are perfectly observed,...