In equilibrium play of a two-round tournament, we find that underdogs exert more effort in the opening round whereas favorites save more effort for the final. Ability differences are therefore compressed in the opening round so upsets are more likely and amplified in the final so blowouts are...

This paper investigates the effects of hatred in two-player games. We model hate as "reverse-altruism" or a preference for low opponent payoffs, and derive implications for behavior in conflicts where players are motivated by hate. We use these results to illuminate several policy issues, both...

The low representation of female workers in elite jobs is sometimes attributed to a tail effect: If the human capital distribution exhibits less variation among females than among males, then even with comparable average human capital there will be fewer females in the right tail than males....

We consider the problem of assigning sellers and buyers into stable matches. The agents are located along a line and the match surplus function is decreasing in the distance between partners. We investigate the structure of stable assignments under both non-transferable utility (NTU) and...

We examine the link between the penalties used to punish convicted criminals and judicial prejudice against defendants. In our model, agents choose to commit crimes if their privately observed utility from doing so is high enough. A crime generates noisy evidence, and defendants are convicted...

In our model, production of a final good requires access to an excludable resource owned by an integrated firm. The quality of the resource depends on an investment by the owner and impacts the downstream demand curve. Under open access, the owner must share the resource with downstream...