We study cheap-talk pre-play communication in the static all-pay auctions. For the case of two bidders, all correlated and communication equilibria are payoff equivalent to the Nash equilibrium if there is no reserve price, or if it is commonly known that one bidder has a strictly higher value....

This paper studies the effects of health shocks on the demand for health insurance and annuities, precautionary saving, and the welfare implications of public policies in a simple life-cycle model. I show that when the health shock simultaneously increases health expenses and reduces longevity,...

The nodes of an extensive-form game are commonly specified as sequences of actions. Rubinstein calls such nodes histories. We find that this sequential notation is superfl uous in the sense that nodes can also be specified as sets of actions. The only cost of doing so is to rule out games with...

We introduce three definitions. First, we let a "basement" be a set of nodes and actions that supports at least one assessment. Second, we derive from an arbitrary basement its implied "plausibility" (i.e. infinite-relative-likelihood) relation among the game's nodes. Third, we say that this...

We study communication in a static Cournot duopoly model under the assumption that the firms have unverifiable private information about their costs. We show that cheap talk between the firms cannot transmit any information. However, if the firms can communicate through a third party,...

Irving Fisher's encounter with the Quantity theory of Money began in the 1890s, during the debate about bimetallism, and reached its high point in 1911 with the publication of The Purchasing Power of Money. His most important refinement of the theory, derived from his recognition of bank...

James Ahiakpor's critique of our 2002 work on the relationship between a certain 1932 Harvard Memorandum on anti-depression policies and the 1932 Harris Foundation Manifesto dealing with the same issues misses the significance of these documents, and of the relationships between them, both for...

We solve for the optimal mechanism for selling two goods when the buyer’s demand characteristics are unobservable. In the case of substitutable goods, the seller has an incentive to offer lotteries over goods in order to charge the buyers with large differences in the valuations a higher price...

We study a mechanism design problem under the assumption that renegotiation cannot be prevented. We investigate what kind of equilibria of which mechanisms are renegotiation-proof under a variety of renegotiation procedures, and which social choice functions can be implemented in a way that is...

We extend the ‘no-haggling’ result of Riley and Zeckhauser (1983) to the class of linear multiproduct monopoly problems when the buyer’s valuations are smoothly distributed. In particular we show that there is no loss for the seller in optimizing over mechanisms such that all allocations...