In this paper we present a new auction, the bisection auction, that can be used for the sale of a single indivisible object. We discuss the issue concerning the information revelation requirement of this auction and the associated amount of data that needs to be transmitted. We show that in the...

A higher job creation is a common result by many theoretical approaches trying to model marginal labor market reforms. In the framework proposed by Berton and Garibaldi [2006], in particular, the equilibrium arrival rate of temporary job offers is expected to be higher than the arrival rate of...

We consider a model of electoral competition in which two politicians compete to get elected. Each politician is characterized by a valence, which is unobservable to voters and can take one of two values: high or low. The electorate prefers politicians with high valence, but random shocks may...

Tournaments are designed to enhance participants’ effort and productivity. However, ranking near the top may increase psychological pressure and reduce performance. We empirically study the impact of interim rank on performance using data from international diving tournaments. We find...

This paper analyses the role played by financial literacy in savings decisions and wealth decumulation. The broad evidence shows that (elderly) households do not decumulate their assets as they age, contradicting the standard life-cycle theory, which predicts that households should decumulate...

The financial deficits of many social security systems caused by ageing populations and stagnating economies are forcing workers to retire later from the labour market. An extended working life combined with rapid technological progress in many sectors, is likely making older workers’ skills...

We present a partnership model where heterogeneous agents bargain over the gains from trade and search on the match. Frictions allow agents to extract higher rents from more productive partners, generating an endogenous preference for high types. More productive agents upgrade their partners...

This paper deals with the open issue about the choice between a centralized versus a decentralized public procurement strategy. Using a unique dataset on tender prices of selected drugs for hospital usage awarded by a sample of 52 Italian local health service providers (ASLs) between 2009 and...

We analyze the rational expectation equilibria of a delegated port- folio management model in which two risky assets have completely independent returns and liquidity shocks. Some managers have per- fect information on the assets' returns while others are uninformed and try to infer information...