Wisconsin’s welfare reform program, Wisconsin Works (W-2), is among the most ambitious and comprehensive state reforms supported by the U.S. government’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. This paper describes the W-2 program in Wisconsin, compares distinctive...

This paper considers U.S. social policy in the years 1935-1960 through the prism of recurring disagreements over the appropriate balance between social security and individual freedom. The disagreements were sharpest in the 1930s, when the Social Security bill was drafted and revised, and...

Many grant applications have a preliminary stage where only a select group are invited to submit a full application. Similarly, procurement contracts by governments are often awarded through a two-stage procedure. We model and analyze such environments where the designer cares about the style of...

Using contests to generate innovation has and is widely used. Such contests often involve offering a prize that depends upon the accomplishment (effort). Using an all-pay auction as a model of a contest, we determine the optimal reward for inducing innovation. In a symmetric environment, we find...

We propose a new solution concept to address the problem of sharing a surplus among the agents generating it. The problem is formulated in the preferences-endowments space. The solution is defined recursively, incorporating notions of consistency and fairness and relying on properties satisfied...

We analyze situations in which a group of agents (and possibly a designer) have to reach a decision that will affect all the agents. Examples of such scenarios are the location of a nuclear reactor or the siting of a major sport event. To address the problem of reaching a decision, we propose a...