We study implementation in environments where agents have limited ability to imitate others. Agents are randomly and privately endowed with type-dependent sets of messages. So sending a message becomes a partial proof regarding type. For environments where agents can send any combination of...

In this paper we study "investment tournaments," a class of decision problems that involve gradual allocation of investment among several alternatives whose values are subject to exogenous shocks. The decision-maker's payoff is determined by the final values of the alternatives. An important...

In the United States, more than two-thirds of decedents with multichild families divide their estates exactly equally among their children. In contrast, gifts given before death are usually unequal. These findings challenge the validity of existing theories regarding the determination of...

In the United States, more than two-thirds of decedents with multichild families divide their estates exactly equally among their children. In contrast, intra vivos gifts are usually unequal. These findings challenge the validity of existing theories regarding the determination of...

In this paper I study mechanism design by an informed principal. I show that generically this problem has an ex-post efficient solution. In the equilibrium mechanism, the informed principal appropriates all expected social surplus, with each type of her getting all expected social surplus...

We investigate the issue of implementation via individually rational ex-post budget-balanced Bayesian mechanisms. We show that all decision rules generating a nonnegative expected social surplus are implementable via such mechanisms if and only if the probability distribution of the agents' type...