A granular gas may be modeled as a set of hard-spheres undergoing inelastic collisions; its microscopic dynamics is thus strongly irreversible. As pointed out in several experimental works bearing on turbulent flows or granular materials, the power injected in a dissipative system to sustain a steady-state over an asymptotically large time window is a central observable. We describe an analytic...

Many transport policies and innovations are liable to have implications for human health and safety. How should such implications be weighed against the other costs and benefits? In particular, when policy makers are undertaking social cost-benefit analysis, what monetary value should be attached to any health or safety components? Standard welfare economics suggests that the answer should refl...

We compare two fixed-prize mechanisms for funding public goods, an all-pay auction and a lottery, where public good provision can only occur if the participants’ contributions equal or exceed the fixed-prize value. We show that the provisional nature of the fixed-prize means that efficiency and endowment conditions must both be satisfied to assure positive public good provision. Our main findin...

This paper studies equilibrium behavior in a class of games that models asymmetric multiprize competitions in which players’ costs are not necessarily strictly decreasing. Such costs accommodate head starts, which capture incumbency advantages, prior investments, and technological differences. I provide an algorithm that constructs the unique equilibrium in which players do not choose weakly-do...