In an assignment market with uncertainty regarding productive ability of participants, early contracting can occur as participants balance risk sharing and sorting efficiency. More promising agents may contract early with each other because insurance gains outweigh sorting inefficiency, whereas...

We present a model of delegation with self-interested and privately informed experts. A team of experts with extreme but opposite biases is acceptable to a wide range of decision makers with diverse preferences, but the value of expertise from such a team is low. A decision maker wants to...

The shadow price of a productive good is equal to its money price less its marginal product. As more of the good is consumed, its shadow price rises because of diminishing productivity and the consumer's full income also rises because the marginal product is positive. The direction of the...

This paper discusses the implications of rationing by waiting when consumers have different time costs and personal valuation. The joint distribution function of time costs and personal valuations is used to characterize market equilibrium. It is argued that, under certain conditions, an...

A free-rider problem arises when a group choice between two alternatives has to be made on the basis of privately collected evidence, leading to insufficient effort in gathering evidence and an ex ante welfare loss for the group. To alleviate the free-rider problem, the group can commit to a...

A supply-determined model of housing investment is estimated from quarterly data over the 1963-83 period. The model is built on dynamic marginal cost pricing considerations and allows short- and long-run supply elasticities to differ. These are estimated as 1.0 and 3.0, respectively, but most of...

U.S. beef cattle stocks are among the most periodic economic time series. A theory of cattle cycles is constructed on the basis of breeding stock inventory decisions. The low fertility rate of cows and substantial lags and future feedback between fertility and consumption decisions cause the...