We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages if and only if there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses).

Consider a principal who hires heterogeneous agents to work for him over T periods, without prior knowledge of their respective skills, and intends to promote one of them at the end. In each period the agents choose effort levels and produce random outputs, independently of each other, and are...

For extensive form games with perfect information, consider a learning process in which, at any iteration, each player unilaterally deviates to a best response to his current conjectures of others' strategies; and then updates his conjectures in accordance with the induced play of the game. We...

We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages when there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses).

In our previous paper we built a general equilibrium model of default and punishment in which equilibrium always exists and endogenously determines asset promises, penalties, and sales constraints. In this paper we interpret the endogenous sales constraints as equilibrium signals. By...

We extend the standard model of general equilibrium with incomplete markets to allow for default and punishment by thinking of assets as pools. The equilibrating variables include expected delivery rates, along with the usual prices of assets and commodities. By reinterpreting the variables, our...

A simple optimal garnishing rule to discourage strategic bankruptcy is derived.

We consider a principal who is keen to induce his agents to work at their maximal effort levels. To this end, he samples n days at random out of the T days on which they work, and awards a prize of B dollars to the most productive agent. The principal's policy (B,n) induces a strategic game...

We criticize the R.E.E. approach to asymmetric information general equilibrium because it does not explain how information gets "into" the prices. This leads to well-known paradoxes. We suggest a multiperiod game instead, where the flow of information into and out of prices is explicitly...