- A PROCEDURE FOR SHARING RECYCLING COSTS

This paper examines a situation in which the production activities of different agents, in a common geographical location, create waste products that are either of a similar biological or chemical composition or offer commercially compatible combinations. What we propose here, therefore, is a cost-sharing model for the of recycling of their waste products. We concentrate, however, on the specific case in which the agents' activities are heterogeneous. We first examine, from a normative point of view, the cost-sharing rule, which we shall call the multi-commodity serial (MCS) rule. We introduce a property, that we call Cost-Based Equal Treatment, and we demonstrate that the unique rule verifying the Serial Principle and this property is the MCS rule. We then deal with the analysis of the agents' strategic behavior when they are allowed to select their own production levels, in which case the total cost is then split, in accordance with the MCS rule. We show that there is only one Nash equilibrium, which is obtained from an interactive elimination of dominated strategies.Cost Sharing Rules, Serial Cost Sharing, Dominance Solvability.

TULLOCK AND HIRSHLEIFER: A MEETING OF THE MINDS

We introduce the serial contest by building on the desirable properties of two prominent contest games. This family of contest games relies both on relative efforts (as Tullock's proposal) and on absolute effort differences (as difference-form contests). An additional desirable feature is that the serial contest is homogeneous of degree zero in contestant's efforts. The family is characterized by a parameter representing how sensitive the outcome is to contestants' efforts. It encompasses as polar cases the (fair) lottery and the (deterministic) all-pay auction. Equilibria have a close relationship to those of the (deterministic) all-pay auction and important properties of the latter hold for the serial contest, too.rent-seeking, (non-) deterministic contest, contest success function, all-pay auction, rent dissipation, exclusion principle, preemption effect, cap, campaign contributions.

TOPS RESPONSIVENESS, STRATEGY-PROOFNESS AND COALITION FORMATION PROBLEMS

This paper introduces a property over agents' preferences, called Tops Responsiveness Condition. Such a property guarantees that the core in Hedonic Coalition Formation games is not empty. It is also shown that a mechanism exists that selects a stable allocation. It turns out that this mechanism, to be called tops covering, is strategy-proof even if the core is not a singleton. Furthermore, we also find out that the tops covering mechanism is the only strategy-proof mechanism that always selects stable allocations.Coalition Formation; Stability; Strategy Proofness.

- THE ROLE OF UNIONS IN HIRING PROCEDURES FOR JOB MARKETS

This paper studies simple hiring procedures for job markets. We show that when agents act strategically only individually rational outcomes should be expected. Moreover, If agents can form unions, thereby gaining the possibility to commit on the decision to be chosen, only stable allocations are implemented.job matching markets, mechanism design

Competition for Procurement Shares

We propose a new procurement procedure which allocates shares of the total amount to be procured depending on the bids of suppliers. Among the properties of the mechanism are: (i) Bidders have an incentive to participate in the procurement procedure, as equilibrium payos are strictly positive. (ii) The mechanism allows to vary the extent to which armative action objectives, like promoting local industries, are pursued. (iii) Surprisingly, even accomplishing armative action goals, procurement expenditures might be lower than under a classical auction format.Procurement Auction; Armative Action

ALL-PAY AUCTION EQUILIBRIA IN CONTESTS

We analyze (non-deterministic) contests with anonymous contest success functions. There is no restriction on the number of contestants or on their valuations for the prize. We provide intuitive and easily verifiable conditions for the existence of an equilibrium with properties similar to the one of the (deterministic) all-pay auction. Since these conditions are fulfilled for a wide array of situations, the predictions of this equilibrium are very robust to the specific details of the contest. An application of this result contributes to fill a gap in the analysis of the popular Tullock rent- seeking game because it characterizes properties of an equilibrium for increasing returns to scale larger than two, for any number of contestants and in contests with or without a common value.(non-) deterministic contest, all-pay auction, contest success functions.

Affirmative Action and School Choice

This paper proposes a reform for school allocation procedures in order to help integration policies reach their objective. For this purpose, we suggest the use of a natural two-step mechanism. The (equitable) first step is introduced as an adaptation of the deferred-acceptance algorithm designed by Gale and Shapley (1962), when students are divided into two groups. The (efficient) second step captures the idea of exchanging places inherent to Gale’s Top Trading Cycle. This latter step could be useful for Municipal School Boards when implementing some integration policies.Integration Policy; School Allocation; Affirmative Action

Researching with Whom? Stability and Manipulation

This paper explores the existence of stable research teams, when each agent's preferences depend on the set of researchers collaborating with her. We introduce a property over researchers' preferences, called tops responsiveness guaranteeing the existence of stable research teams configurations. We also provide a stable mechanism, induced by the so-called tops covering algorithm, which is strategy-proof when researchers preferences satisfy tops responsiveness. Furthermore, we also find out that, in this framework the tops covering mechanism is the unique strategy-proof mechanism that always selects stable allocations.Coalition Formation, Research Teams Configurations, Stability, Strategy-Proofness.

- SEQUENTIAL DECISIONS IN THE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS PROBLEM

This paper studies the sequential mechanisms which mimic matching procedures formany-to-one-real-life matching markets. We provide a family of mechanisms implementing thestudent´ optimal allocation in subgame perfect equibrium.Matching, Implementation, Mechanism Design

Sequential decisions in the college admissions problem.

This paper studies sequential mechanisms which mimic a matching procedures for many-to-one real life matching markets. We provide a family of mechanisms implementing the students' optimal allocation in Subgame Perfect Equilibrium.Matching markets; College admission problems; Mechanism design;