This paper evaluates direct and structural discrimination as a means of increasing efforts in the most widely studied contests. We establish that a designer who maximizes efforts subject to a balanced-budget constraint prefers dual discrimination, namely, change of the contestants ́prize...

In an experts-assisted decision making paradigm, the information collection design becomes a strategic variable under a weak assumption that the final decision is dependent on the design used to collect information as well. As a result, the same information of the experts and the decision maker...

Two groups produce a network good perceived by a third party, such as a police or military institution, as a "public bad", referred to as "crime" for simplicity. These two groups, considered mafias, are assumed to be antagonists, whether they are enemies or competitors in the same market,...

Private politics are often introduced by market participants in the absence of public regulation. But when is private politics enough, efficient, or better than administratively costly public regulation? We present a novel framework in which we can study the interaction between regulation,...

Fenno's classic paper, "The Appropriations Committee as a Political System" (1962), focuses on the norms and institutions that are the foundations of House Appropriations Committee’s (HAC) success. The fundamental idea is that of committee integration, the degree to which committee members...

This paper studies the equilibrating process of several implementation mechanisms using naive adaptive dynamics. We show that the dynamics converge and are stable, for the canonical mechanism of implementation in Nash equilibrium. In this way we cast some doubt on the criticism of "complexity"...

We perform an experimental test of a modification of the controversial canonical mechanism for Nash implementation, using 3 subjects in non-repeated groups, as well as 3 outcomes, states of nature, and integer choices. We find that this mechanism successfully implements the desired outcome a...

We consider mechanism design in contexts in which agents exhibit bounded depth of reasoning (level k) instead of rational expectations. We use simple direct mechanisms, in which agents report only first-order beliefs. While level 0 agents are assumed to be truth tellers, level k agents...

We consider mechanism design in contexts in which agents exhibit bounded depth of reasoning (level k ) instead of rational expectations. We use simple direct mechanisms, in which agents report only first-order beliefs. While level 0 agents are assumed to be truth tellers, level k agents...

We analyze mechanisms that are used to allocate dormitory rooms to students at college campuses. Students consist of newcoming freshmen, who do not currently occupy any rooms, and more senior students each of whom occupies a room from the previous year. In addition to the rooms already occupied...