We consider algorithmic problems in a distributed setting where the participants cannot be assumed to follow the algorithm but rather their own self-interest. As such participants, termed agents, are capable of manipulating the algorithm, the algorithm designer should ensure in advance that the agents’ interests are best served by behaving correctly. Following notions from the field of mechanis...

A partly heuristic attempt at exploring long-run policies aimed at a second-best compromise between ex ante risk-sharing efficiency and ex post productive efficiency. Wage subsidies for low-skilled workers financed by taxes on high wages are advocated, together with improved risk sharing between capital and labour, between generations and between the countries belonging to EMU. The scope of the...

Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this paper we study how a signaling mechanism, where each worker can send a signal of interest to one employer, facilitates matches ...

This paper offers a model of optimism, pessimism, and cognitive dissonance. Beliefs—and consequently choices—depend not only on relevant information, but also on what makes the decision maker better-off. In an associated experiment, subjects who stood to gain from an increase in the price of a financial asset predicted higher prices than subjects who stood to gain from a decrease in price. Cons...

We study if and how social preferences extend to risky environments. We provide experimental evidence from different versions of dictator games with risky outcomes, and establish that preferences that are exclusively based on ex post or on ex ante comparisons cannot generate the observed behavioral patterns. The more money decision-makers transfer in the standard dictator game, the more likely ...

I study an economy with sellers and buyers with unit supplies and unit demands. Both parties have valuations uniformly distributed on a unit interval. I quantify the inefficiency, compared to the Walrasian market, caused by a market where the agents meet randomly. There are several causes of inefficiency that I deal with separately. First, even if there is perfect information about valuations i...

The existence of a common prior is a property of the state space used to model the players' asymmetric information. We show that this property is not just a technical artifact of the model, but that it is immanent to the players' beliefs. To this end, we devise a condition, phrased solely in terms of the players' mutual beliefs about the basic, objective issues of possible uncertainty, which is...

This article examines evidence for the private rationality of decisions to choose bottled water using a large, nationally representative sample. Consumers are more likely to believe that bottled water is safer or tastes better if they have had adverse experiences with tap water or live in states with more prevalent violations of EPA water quality standards. Perceptions of superior safety, taste...