Group formation is important in many economic contexts. The current literature on group formation assumes that individuals may join any existing group. In this paper, I consider the implications of social, geographic, and informational constraints to group membership decisions. I embed the...

Many organizations rely on the skills of innovative individuals to create value, including academic and government institutions, think tanks, and knowledge-based firms. Roughly speaking, workers in these fields can be divided into two categories: specialists, who have a deep knowledge of a...

This paper studies implementation in a principal-agent model of adverse selection. We explore ways in which the additional structure of principal agent models (compared to general implementaion models) simplifies the implementation problem. We develop a connection between the single crossing...

This study investigates whether models of forward-looking behavior explain the observed patterns of heavy drinking and smoking of men in late middle age in the Health and Retirement Study better than myopic models. We develop and estimate a sequence of nested models which differ by their degree...

The evolution of education spending in California has received plenty of attention by both academics and practitioners after this state's education finance reform of the 1970's. The impact on public education spending of the demographic trends associated with immigration has not been thoroughly...

I propose a centralized clearinghouse for college admissions in which students can signal enthusiasm by commitment, like early-decision programs. Furthermore, students can specify financial aid in their preferences and they can be matched with multiple colleges at the same time. This...