Due to the well-known efficiency--rent extraction trade-off, the optimal mechanism in a pure screening environment (e.g., revenue maximization in auctions or cost minimization in procurement) typically calls for distortions in allocative efficiency when agents possess private information at the...

In this paper, we study score procurement auctions with all-pay quality bids. A supplier's score is the difference between his quality and price bids. The supplier with the highest score wins and gets paid his own price bid. The procurer's payoff is the difference between the winner's quality...

We show that the prevalence of prolonged tennis contests drops sharply when the ambient environment deteriorates through heat or pollution. We develop a multi-battle dynamic model to investigate how the disutility from a protracted competition shapes agents' willingness to fight on. Our theory...

We study identification and estimation in first-price auctions with risk-averse bidders and selective entry, building on a flexible entry and bidding framework we call the Affiliated Signal with Risk Aversion (AS-RA) model. This framework extends the AS model of Gentry and Li (2014) to...

This paper studies optimal auction design when buyers’ value discovery investment is covert but essential for mutually beneficial trade between seller and buyers. Since selling mechanisms contingent on value discovery (e.g. ex ante fees charged upon information acquisition) are not feasible,...

We study optimal dynamic selling mechanisms in a two-stage model where the buyer can search for a better price at the second stage. When this outside price is public, the optimal selling mechanism takes the form of a fixed first-stage price with price matching in the second stage. In contrast,...

We investigate optimal favoritism using identity-contingent prizes in a two-player Tullock model. Besides the usual balance effect, prize allocation has an extra efficiency effect: One additional unit of prize tends to induce more effort, if it is used as the winning prize for the stronger...

This paper provides a different approach to establish the uniqueness of equilibrium in Tullock con- tests between two players with asymmetric valuations, when the discriminatory power r is between 1 and 2. Our result complements that of Ewerhart (2017) in Ölling up the remaining gap in the...

We study identification and inference in first-price auctions with risk averse bidders and selective entry, building on a flexible entry and bidding framework we call the Affiliated Signal with Risk Aversion (AS-RA) model. Assuming that the econometrician observes either exogenous variation in...