We study a buyer-seller problem of a novel good for which the seller does not yet know the production cost. A contract can be agreed upon at either the ex-ante stage, before learning the cost, or at the ex-post stage, when both parties will incur a costly delay, but the seller knows the...

A probability threshold determines whether the demand for safety is normal or inferior for a fixed loss severity (Sweeney and Beard, 1992). The size of this threshold is unknown. We show that it is 0.5 for quadratic utility, less than 0.5 for standard utility, and compute it explicitly for...

We propose and validate a simple way to augment the standard Becker-DeGroot-Marschak method that researchers use to elicit willingness to pay (WTP) for a good. The augmentation is to measure WTP for another good ("benchmark good"), one unrelated to both the good the researcher is interested in...

Playing, Voting, and Dividing -- Playing Successfully: Noncooperative Game Theory -- Cooperative Game Theory -- Voting and Judging: Preference Aggregation by Voting -- The Complexity of Manipulative Actions in Single-Peaked Societies -- Multiwinner Voting -- Judgment Aggregation -- Fair...

This paper examines the question whether adjudication can be viewed as a private good, i.e., one whose optimal level will be generated in a free market. Part I focuses on private courts, noting their limitations as institutions for dispute resolution and rule creation but also stressing the...

When a product's product provision entails fixed costs, it will be made available only if a sufficient number of people want it. Some products are produced and consumed locally, so that provision requires not only a large group favoring the product but a large number nearby. Just as one has an...

Das Coronavirus hat viele alte Gesetzmäßigkeiten in Frage gestellt. Das gilt auch für die Vermessung ökonomischer Aktivitäten. Verfahren aus der Hochzeit der Industrialisierung werden dem strukturellen Wandel zunächst zu einer Dienstleistungsgesellschaft, später zu einer Digitalwirtschaft...

In this paper we demonstrate how the impure public good model can be converted into a pure public good model with satiation of private consumption, which can be handled more easily, by using a variation of the aggregative game approach as devised by Cornes and Hartley (2007). We point out the...

We identify a natural counterpart of the standard GARP for demand data in which goods are all indivisible. We show that the new axiom (DARP, for “discrete axiom of revealed preference”) is necessary and sufficient for the rationalization of the data by a well-behaved utility function. Our...

The study of matching theory has gained importance recently with applications in Kidney Exchange, House Allocation, School Choice etc. The general theme of these problems is to allocate goods in a fair manner amongst participating agents. The agents generally have a unit supply/demand of a good...

For the classic problem of fair allocation of indivisible goods, we introduce the notion of minimum social inequality allocations and discuss its connection to other fair allocation rules such as minimum envy. We show that a fair allocation problem can always be cast as the problem of finding an...

We study an adverse-selection model in which the distribution of the asset is affected by unobservable actions of the seller. The seller's equilibrium behavior is characterized by a risk-seeking disposition, and a competitive market, in which the underlying distribution of the traded asset is...

In this paper we study the real and financial effects of insider trading in the spirit of Jain and Mirman (1999). Unlike the previous works that address this issue, we suppose that the production of the real good is costly and depends mainly of the price of an intermediate good produced locally...

The government and a non-governmental organization (NGO) can invest in the provision of a public good. Who should be the owner of the public project? In an incomplete contracting model in which ex post negotiations are without frictions, the party that values the public good most should be the...

We investigate whether growth in consumer income causes an increased willingness to pay to mitigate negative externalities from consumption. Correlational field evidence suggests a positive relationship between income and social responsibility. To investigate a causal link, we conduct a...

This article is a study focusing on an important area of appliances we inevitably use almost daily and which has a tendency of renewal, diversification and quality improvement – that is the television set. There is a discrepancy between the quality of the products on the market and the one...

We study an endowment economy with heterogeneous agents and two complementary consumption goods, one of which is indivisible. Although agents have standard concave preferences, the indivisibility gives rise to Friedman-Savage convexity in indirect utility. Agents care about relative, not just...

Using the 2012 China Household Finance Survey, this study finds that happiness in China is positively associated with expenditures on status and social goods, not with spending that focuses on improving one's material well-being. It also demonstrates that government-led demolition can be a...

This paper deals with the analysis on adventitious utility—that contains many aspects that are connected to the contemporary debate on positional goods—of the early twentieth century American economist, largely forgotten today, George Pendleton Watkins. According to the author, adventitious...

We investigate whether growth in consumer income causes an increased willingness to pay to mitigate negative externalities from consumption. Correlational field evidence suggests a positive relationship between income and social responsibility. To investigate a causal link, we conduct a...

We investigate whether growth in consumer income causes an increased willingness to pay to mitigate negative externalities from consumption. Correlational field evidence suggests a positive relationship between income and social responsibility. To investigate a causal link, we conduct a...