This paper presents an overlapping generations model to explain why humans live in families rather than in other pair groupings. Since most non-human species are not familial, something special must be behind the family. It is shown that the two necessary features that explain the origin of the...

In a patent race, social incentives and private incentives may sometimes coincide and at other times diverge - too many researchers remain in the race. If the social planner cannot determine what stage the researchers have achieved, this informational constraint can result in a socially...

We provide an ascending auction that yields an efficient outcome when there are many identical units for sale and bidders have interdependent values and downward-sloping demand. Our ascending auction both extends and generalizes <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="R1">Ausubel's (2004)</xref> and yields the same outcome as <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="R12">Perry and Reny's...</xref>