We study contests where several privately informed agents bid for a prize. All bidders bear a cost of bidding that is an increasing function of their bids, and, moreover, bids may be capped. We show that regardless of the number of bidders, if bidders have linear or concave cost functions, then...

We study an elimination tournament with heterogenous contestants whose ability is common-knowledge. Each pair-wise match is modeled as an all-pay auction where the winner gets the right to compete at the next round. Equilibrium efforts are in mixed strategies, yielding rather complex play...

We study a model of negotiation and coalition formation concerning a public expenditure and its financing. The agents must determine which coalition will jointly produce a public good, how much will be produced and how the cost is to be shared. Agents that do not belong to the final coalition...

We study the optimal design of organizations under the assumption that agents in a contest care about their relative position. A principal determines the number and size of status categories in order to maximize output. We first consider the pure status case without tangible prizes. Our results...

We study the optimal design of organizations under the assumption that agents in a contest care about their relative position. A judicious definition of status categories can be used by a principal in order to influence the agents’ performance. We first consider a pure status case where...

We study auctions for an invisible object. The outcome of the auction influences the future interaction among agents. The impact of that interaction on agent's is assumed to be a function of the agent's valuations. While agent's i valuation is private information to i, the other valuations are...

In diesem Jahr wurden die beiden Ökonomen William Vickrey und James Mirrlees für ihre bahnbrechenden Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der "Informationsökonomie" mit dem Nobelpreis für Wirtschaftswissenschaften geehrt. Dieses Papier gibt einen Überblick über die Arbeiten von William Vickrey.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), considered by some to be the greatest German writer, employed a number of sophisticated strategies in his dealings with publishers. None of them is as intriguing as the one appearing in Goethe's letter, dated January 16, 1797, to the publisher Vieweg...