A multi-divisional firm can engage in ”winner-picking” to redistribute scarce funds efficiently across divisions. But there is a conflict between rewarding winners (investing) and producing resources with which to reward winners (incentives). Managers in winning divisions are tempted to free-ride on resources produced by managers in loosing divisions whose incentives to produce resources, antic...

The existence of a pure-strategy subgame-perfect equilibrium in qualities and prices is investigated in a duopoly model of vertical differentiation where quality improvements require a quadratic variable cost and network externalities operate. We show that there exists a parameter region where the incentive to predate at the quality stage prevents firms from reaching a pure-strategy non-coopera...

Major League Baseball teams have used the lure of economic riches as an incentive for cities to construct new stadiums at considerable public expense. Estimates of the economic impact of a MLB on host communities have typically been in the vicinity of $300 million. Our analysis suggest these numbers are wildly inflated. Using the baseball strikes of 1981, 1994, and 1995 as test cases, we find t...

Inventory positions of two risk averse market makers are introduced into a Kyle (1985) type batch trading model and the effects are analyzed. An equilibrium is defined with participation constraint and incentive compatibility and it is characterized as γ-coalitional equilibrium. At the equilibrium the two market makers share the risk of clearing orders so that the aggregate pricing schedule bec...

Under incomplete information about (independent) private valuations of a public good, we establish sufficient conditions under which, despite the incentive to free ride on future contributors, the expected total amount of voluntary contributions is higher when agents contribute sequentially (observing prior contributions) rather than simultaneously. We establish this in a conventional framework...

The paper examines the interrelationship between fiscal and monetary policy in a two-country monetary union. The worst scenario occurs when an independent central bank (CB) sets the nominal interest rate and responds to rising government debt/GDP ratios by monetisation. The result is high inflation, high debt/GDP ratios and a large public sector. Government debt and inflation are contained if t...

Economic concerns for equity have motivated game theorists to study envy-free mechanisms. Though not incentive compatible, these mechanisms implement in Nash equilibria efficient allocations at which no agent prefers the consumption of any other agent to their own. In experimental allocation decisions between two players, an envy-free first-price auction achieves similar efficiency and far grea...

Corruption often creates a “briber’s dilemma”: each of the “clients” competing for a rent allocated by a government official has an incentive to pay bribes to try to obtain preferential treatment, but they would all be better off if they could mutually commit not to pay bribes. This paper uses a model of linked games to show how informal relationships among the clients may enable them to enforc...

Margins in international banking have fallen dramatically during the last years. Therefore, banks face the pressing need to develop more suitable forms of organization and more efficient incentive schemes. In a principal agent framework this paper develops four fundamental rules. The marginal benefits from additional risk taking should be equal to its marginal cost. The top management should se...

Can Contracts Signal Social Norms? Experimental Evidence We investigate whether incentive schemes signal social norms and thus affect behavior beyond their direct economic consequences. A principal-agent experiment is studied in which prior to contract choice principals are informed about past actions of other agents and thus have more information about “norms of behavior”. Compared to a settin...