In addition to supervision costs, the labor cost of an enterprise (plantation) in the system of slavery consists of the cost of acquiring the slaves and the subsistence compensation given out to the slaves. In this paper, we leave aside the issue of supervision costs previously taken up in the...

linear hidden action preferences exhibiting a preference for late resolution of uncertainty. The costly contemplation model (Ergin and Sarver (2008a)), as well as a generalization of the Kreps and Porteus (1978) model that allows for preference for flexibility in the sense of DLR (2001) are also...

We study preferences for timing of resolution of objective uncertainty in a menu-choice model with two stages of information arrival. We characterize a general class of utility representations called hidden action representations, which interpret an intrinsic preference for timing of resolution...

Very little is known about the student-optimal stable mechanism when school priorities are weak. In current practice, the student proposing deferred acceptance algorithm is applied after indifferences in priority orders are broken with a lottery. Although such a tie-breaking procedure preserves...

We develop a Savage-type model of choice under uncertainty in which agents identify uncertain prospects with subjective compound lotteries. Our theory permits issue preference; that is, agents may not be indifferent among gambles that yield the same probability distribution if they depend on...

Many school districts in the U.S. use a student assignment mechanism that we refer to as the Boston mechanism. Under this mechanism a student loses his priority at a school unless his parents rank it as their first choice. Therefore parents are given incentives to rank high on their list the...