Matching with Incomplete Preferences

I study a two-sided marriage market in which agents have incomplete preferences -- i.e., they find some alternatives incomparable. The strong (weak) core consists of matchings wherein no coalition wants to form a new match between themselves, leaving some (all) agents better off without harming anyone. The strong core may be empty, while the weak core can be too large. I propose the concept of the "compromise core" -- a nonempty set that sits between the weak and the strong cores. Similarly, I define the men-(women-) optimal core and illustrate its benefit in an application to India's engineering college admissions system

Job Insecurity

We examine the relationship between job security and productivity in a fixed wage worker­firm relationship facing match quality uncertainty. The worker’s action affects both learning and current productivity. The firm, seeing worker behavior and outcomes, makes a firing decision. As bad news accrues, the firm cannot commit to retain the worker. This creates perverse incentives: the worker strat egically slows learning, harming productivity. We fully characterize the unique equilibrium in our continuous time game. Consistent with some evidence in organizational psychology, the relationship between job insecurity and productivity is U shaped: a worker is least productive when his job is moderately secure

Learning in Relational Contracts

We study relational contracts between a firm and a worker with mutual uncertainty about match quality. The worker’s actions are publicly observed and generate both output and information about the match quality. We show that the relational contracts may be inefficient. We characterize the inefficiency through a holdup problem on the contemporaneous output. In the frequent action limit, these inefficiencies persist if and only if information degrades at least at the same rate at which impatience vanishes. We characterize optimal relational contracts and show that they involve actions that yield both a lower payoff and less information than another action

A Fair Procedure in a Marriage Market

We propose a new algorithm in the two-sided marriage market wherein both sides of the market propose in each round. The algorithm always yields a stable matching. Moreover, the outcome is a Rawlsian stable matching if the number of men and women is equal. Lastly, the algorithm can be computed in polynomial time and, from a practical standpoint, can be used in markets where fairness considerations are important

Buying from a Group

A buyer procures a good owned by a group of sellers whose heterogeneous cost of trade is private information. The buyer must either buy the whole good or nothing, and sellers share the transfer in proportion to their share of the good. We characterize the optimal mechanism: trade occurs if and only if the buyer’s benefit of trade exceeds a weighted average of sellers’ virtual costs. These weights are endogenous, with sellers who are ex ante less inclined to trade receiving higher weight. This mechanism always outperforms posted-price mechanisms. An extension characterizes the entire Pareto frontier

A fair procedure in a marriage market

We propose a new algorithm in the two-sided marriage market wherein both sides of the market propose in each round. The algorithm always yields astable matching. Moreover, the outcome is often a non-extremal matching, and in fact, is a Rawlsian stable matching if the matching market is "balanced." Lastly, the algorithm can be computed in polynomial time and, hence, from a practical standpoint, can be used in markets in which fairness considerations are important

The Wrong Kind of Information

Agents, some with a bias, decide between undertaking a risky project and a safe alternative based on information about the project's efficiency. Only a part of that information is verifiable. Unbiased agents want to undertake only efficient projects, while biased agents want to undertake any project. If the project causes harm, a court examines the verifiable information, forms a belief about the agent's type, and decides the punishment. Tension arises between deterring inefficient projects and a chilling effect on using the unverifiable information. Improving the unverifiable information always increases overall efficiency, but improving the verifiable information may reduce efficiency

The Wrong Kind of Information

Agents, some with a bias, decide between undertaking a risky project and a safe alternative based on information about the project's efficiency. Only a part of that information is verifiable. Unbiased agents want to undertake only efficient projects, while biased agents want to undertake any project. If the project causes harm, a court examines the verifiable information, forms a belief about the agent's type, and decides the punishment. Tension arises between deterring inefficient projects and a chilling effect on using the unverifiable information. Improving the unverifiable information always increases overall efficiency, but improving the verifiable information may reduce efficiency

Goodwill in communication

An expert advises a decision maker over time. With both the quality of advice and the extent to which it is followed remaining private, the players have limited information with which to discipline each other. Even so, communication in and of itself facilitates cooperation, the relationship evolving based on the expert's advice. We show a formal equivalence between our setting and one of cheap talk with capped money burning, enabling an exact characterization (at fixed discounting) of the expert's attainable payoffs. While an ongoing relationship often helps, our characterization implies that, absent feedback, relational incentives can never restore commitment

Correlation of serum adiponectin and leptin levels in obesity and Type 2 diabetes mellitus

Introduction: Indian phenotype includes higher waist circumference despite lower body mass index, thereby making Indians more prone to diabetes and its complications. Aim: The present study aimed to analyze the serum levels of adiponectin and leptin in the participants with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and obesity and their correlation with hypertension and dyslipidemia. Materials and Methods: In the study, 50 diabetics and 50 controls aged between 40 and 60 years were included in the study. Results: Adiponectin levels were significantly higher in diabetics than in nondiabetic participants irrespective of gender (P ≤ 0.04 in males, P ≤ 0.02 in females). Leptin levels were significantly higher in diabetics compared to nondiabetics (P ≤ 0.001) in both males and females. Conclusion: Adiponectin and leptin levels may be used as important clinical markers for T2DM and obesity