This note extends the simultaneous-move endogenous technology choice model of Mills and Smith (1996) in two directions. First, expanding consideration to when the technology set is sufficiently convex, we find that the likelihood for asymmetric equilibrium in technology choice does not expand...

We study advance selling in a model with a capacity constraint for the seller and in the presence of both consumer heterogeneity and demand uncertainty. Buyers face different levels of uncertainty about their valuations in the advance selling period: one group (called informed buyers) now their...

This paper considers a two-period model with experienced consumers and inexperienced consumers. The retailer determines both advance selling price and regular selling price at the beginning of the first period. I show that advance selling weekly dominates no advance selling, and the optimal...

Multiple prizes are usually awarded in contests (e.g., internal promotions, school admissions, sports, etc.) and players exert effort to increase their chances for winning a higher prize. A multi-prize contest model must provide each player's probabilities of winning each prize as functions of...

In this paper, we identify a set of axioms that is necessary and sufficient for axiomatizing the reverse nested lottery contest proposed by Fu, Lu and Wang (2014), which is the "mirror image" of the conventional nested lottery contest of Clark and Riis (1996). This paper thus provides an...

The size of nations matters, but the literature on the subject is long on theory and short on direct econometric testing. Using a unique time series data set spanning the past two millennia, we study the process of unification and division in historical China. The empirical results are...

Multiple prizes are usually awarded in contests (e.g., internal promotions, school admissions, sports, etc), and players exert effort to increase their chances for winning a higher prize. A multi-prize contest model must provide each player's probabilities of winning each prize as functions of...

We model a game to show that the taxation level in an autocracy reflects the state¡¯s coercive power relative to people¡¯s capacity for violence. The model also specifies the mechanisms through which various factors affect relative state power. The model predicts that taxation level...

Nomadic conquests have helped to shape world history, yet we know little about why they occurred. Using climate and dynastic data from historical China since 221 BCE, this study finds that the likelihood of nomadic conquest increased with less rainfall proxied by drought disasters, which drove...

This paper proposes a multi-prize "reverse" nested lottery contest model, which can be viewed as the "mirror image" of the conventional nested lottery contest of Clark and Riis (1996a). The reverse-lottery contest model determines winners by selecting losers based on contestants' one-shot effort...