Arrow’s celebrated theorem of social choice shows that the aggregation of individual preferences into a social ordering cannot make the ranking of any pair of alternatives depend only on individual preferences over that pair, unless the fundamental weak Pareto and nondictatorship principles are violated. In the standard model of division of commodities, we investigate how much information about...

By combining hidden types and hidden action, this paper shows that the existence of credit rationing need not imply that lending exceeds the full-information level. In this plausible class of models, the appropriate policy is not to subsidise or tax lending but to make alternatives to entrepreneurship more attractive. Doing so may actually increase the number of those borrowing to set up their ...

This paper is concerned with the minimal number of profiles at which a unanimous and anonymous social choice function is manipulable. The lower bound is derived when there are three alternatives to choose from. Examples of social choice functions attaining the lower bound are given. We conjecture that these examples are in fact all minimally manipulable social choice functions. Since some of th...

The grating coupling efficiencies for interlayer connection (overlaid chips) were previously calculated using the new rigorous coupled-wave analysis equivalent-index-slab (RCWA-EIS) method. The chip-to-chip coupling efficiencies were determined for rectangular-groove (binary) gratings. In the present work, the search algorithms used in the RCWA-EIS method are optimized giving rise to improved d...

DEFINITION: Given a set of points p1, p2, ......., pn, the skyline query returns a set of points P, called as the skyline points, such that any point pi ∈ P is not dominated by any other point in the dataset. A point p1 dominates another point p2, if p1 is not worse than p2 in all dimensions and p1 is better than p2 in at least one dimension. In other words, a point p1 dominates another point p...

This paper investigates the significance of the concept of efficiency in human service organisations. Our aim is to discuss how efficiency can be assessed in this kind of organisation. Many typical human service organisations chiefly exist within the public sector’s area of responsibility. Efforts aimed at, for instance, children who are faring badly, young people who are going astray, people w...

In economies subject to uninsurable idiosyncratic risks, competitive equilibrium allocations are constrained inefficient: reallocations of assets support Pareto superior allocations. This is the case even if the asset market for the allocation of aggregate risks is complete. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D52; D60; H20

Adverse selection has a significant influence on trading efficiency in insurance markets. Inspired by the quality identification function of the probation period in the secondhand car market, an insurance contract with a low compensation period is designed. It is proved that the contract can distinguish the risk types of the policyholders to achieve a separating equilibrium. And it can make a s...

I present two modifications of the Vickrey-Clark-Groves mechanism to accommodate bidders’ budget constraints in the combinatorial auction setting and show that they are Pareto-Optimal and (partially) incentive compatible in certain domains.

A buyout option enhances an auction by allowing a bidder to purchase the item at a pre-specified price (instead of attempting to obtain the item by way of auction). A comparison is made between the ex ante welfare of bidders in an auction with a buyout option to a traditional auction with no such option. The impact on bidder welfare is shown to depend upon the distribution from which bidder val...