We study optimal contest design in situations where the designer can reward high performance agents with positive prizes and punish low performance agents with negative prizes. We link the optimal prize structure to the curvature of distribution of abilities in the population. In particular, we...

We derive the revenue maximizing allocation of m units among n symmetric agents who have unit demand, and who take costly actions that influence their values before participating in the mechanism. The allocation problem with costly actions can be represented by a reduced form model where agents...

We derive the revenue maximizing mechanism for a risk-neutral seller whofaces Yaari's [1987] dual risk-averse bidders. The optimal mechanism offers "full-insurance" in the sense that each agent's utility is independent of other agents'reports. The seller excludes less types than under risk...

We study the revenue maximizing allocation of m units among n symmetric agents with unit demand that have convex preferences over the probability of receiving an object. We show that such preferences are naturally induced by a game where the agents take costly actions that affect their values...