We consider the aggregation of individual agents’ von Neumann- Morgenstern preferences over lotteries into a social planner’s von Neumann-Morgenstern preference. We start from Harsanyi’s [18] axiomatization of utilitarianism, and ask under which conditions a social preference order that...

We define and investigate a property of mechanisms that we call “strategic simplicity,” and that is meant to capture the idea that, in strategically simple mechanisms, strategic choices are easy. We define a mechanism to be strategically simple if strategic choices can be based on...

We develop an analysis of voting rules that is robust in the sense that we do not make any assumption regarding voters' knowledge about each other. In dominant strategy voting rules, voters' behavior can be predicted uniquely without making any such assumption. However, on full domains, the only...

The paper introduces a notion of complementarity (substitutability) of two signals which requires that in all decision problems each signal becomes more (less) valuable when the other signal becomes available. We provide a general characterization which relates complementarity and...

Monetary exchange is deemed essential when better incentive-compatible outcomes can be achieved with money than without it. We study essentiality both theoretically and experimentally, using finite-horizon monetary models that are naturally suited to the lab. We also follow the mechanism design...

This paper provides a simple explanation for why some minority groups are economically successful, despite being subject to government-mandated discriminatory policies. We study an economy with private and public sectors in which workers invest in imperfectly observable skills that are important...

This paper studies sequential Bayesian persuasion games with multiple senders. We provide a tractable characterization of equilibrium outcomes. We apply the model to study how the structure of consultations affects information revelation. Adding a sender who moves first cannot reduce...