This article introduces a new model of early contracting. Employers who have private information about the applicant's ability worry that applicants who accept their offer are precisely those who were not offered other jobs. To avoid this winner's curse, employers anticipate the time of...

The incentive effect of coarsening the competition structure in a tournament is studied. By coarsening the competition structure, we mean that coarser performance measure is used while finer information is available. Examples include letter grades or grade classes when finer numeric grades are...

The incentive effect of a handicap in a tournament competition is studied. A handicap may decrease the effort levels of the advantaged group or the disadvantaged group. However, the average effort level will always increase as long as the performance measure is informative of effort in a...

A matching market with imperfect information is studied. With imperfect information, it is shown that friction in a meeting process can facilitate self-selection and thus may improve the matching outcome. As an application, the effect of delay in refereeing time on publication outcome is...