In many economic environments agents make costly and irreversible investments that may enhance their respective threat payoffs but also shrink the utility possibilities set. In such settings, with variable threats and a variable utility possibilities set, it becomes possible to rank different...

In many economic environments agents make costly and irreversible investments (in "guns") that may enhance their respective threat payoffs but also shrink the utility possibilities set. In such settings, with variable threats and a variable utility possibilities set, it becomes possible to rank...

Recent studies have identified various negative effects of public sector corruption. We add to these by considering the association between corruption and deaths due to major earthquakes. After developing a brief theoretical model of the relation between these two variables we test the...

We investigate the coexistence of formal and informal markets. In formal markets, we assume sellers can publicly advertise their prices and locations, whereas in informal markets, sellers need to trade through bilateral bargaining so as to remain anonymous from the taxing authority. We consider...

In the current FIFA penalty shootout mechanism, a coin toss decides which team will kick first. Empirical evidence suggests that the team taking the first kick has a higher probability to win a shootout. We design sequentially fair shootout mechanisms such that in all symmetric Markov-perfect...

In the current FIFA penalty shootout mechanism, a coin toss decides which team will kick first. Empirical evidence suggests that the team taking the first kick has a higher probability to win a shootout. We design sequentially fair shootout mechanisms such that in all symmetric Markov-perfect...

Using a competitive search (price-posting) model, Lester (2011) shows that improving buyers’ price information can counter-intuitively lead to higher prices. We test this result using a lab experiment. Moving from 0 to 1uninformed buyers leads to higher prices in both 2(seller)x2(buyer) and...