This is the true story of the actual use of a formal, decentralized division procedure to allocate silver heirlooms among eight grandchildren fairly and efficiently without distasteful direct monetary payments. Each grandchild's stated preferences for objects in contention were roughly...

Will a more risk-averse individual spend more or less to improve probabilities, say on marketing efforts that enhance the chance of a sale? For any two payoffs and starting probabilities, the answer is unfortunately indeterminate. However, interpreting gambling as increasing small chances of...

An extreme event, such as a nuclear accident, an earthquake, a cluster of adverse reactions to a particular drug, or excessive breakdowns of some class of equipment, frequently focuses attention for the first time on an important issue. By then, however, data on the incidence and magnitudes of...

We consider mechanism design in social choice problems in which agents’ types are continuous, multidimensional, and mutually payoff-relevant, and there are three or more agents. If the center receives a signal that is stochastically related to the agents’ types and direct returns are...

Links between higher education and industry are of vital economic importance. These links provide the environment for innovation and technology transfer and are crucial for sustaining competitiveness, reinventing organisations, creating new businesses, fighting unemployment, and accelerating...

Call b your balance function at wealth W if you are indifferent between W and a 50–50 lottery with outcomes x and b(x). Given one b, u is arbitrary on one side of W but then determined on the other. Given two b‘s, u is arbitrary between the two W′ s but then determined elsewhere....