The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that restrictions on independent political expenditures by corporations and labor unions are unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds (Citizens United v. FEC, 2010). In this paper, we test the hypothesis that the decision gave an electoral boost to...

Matching provisions in state clean elections acts have been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court on First Amendment grounds (Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 2011). By modeling political speech as a costly advertising activity in an electoral contest, we...

We examine the incentives of access-regulated firms to invest in infrastructure facilities they must share with competitors. The non-strategic incentives imply that investment depends positively on the market size. The strategic incentives imply that investment also depends on market...

In equilibrium play of a two-round tournament we find that underdogs exert more effort in the opening round while favorites save more effort for the final. Ability differences between players are therefore compressed in the opening round so upsets are more likely, and amplified in the final so...

We examine ascending auctions with independent private values and a buyout option. The buyout option gives each buyer the opportunity to end the auction prematurely and acquire the object for a fixed price. We fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium and show that buyers with...

This paper provides an overview of Internet file sharing networks and explores the relationship between technological, economic, and legal aspects of file sharing. I chronicle the evolution of content sharing technology since the 1990s and examine the role of network architecture in a copyright...

This paper investigates the effects of hatred in two-player games. We model hate as "reverse-altruism" or a preference for low opponent payoffs, and derive implications for behavior in conflicts where players are motivated by hate. We use these results to illuminate several policy issues, both...

The low representation of female workers in elite jobs is sometimes attributed to a tail effect: If the human capital distribution exhibits less variation among females than among males, then even with comparable average human capital there will be fewer females in the right tail than males....

We consider the problem of assigning sellers and buyers into stable matches. The agents are located along a line and the match surplus function is decreasing in the distance between partners. We investigate the structure of stable assignments under both non-transferable utility (NTU) and...