Papers by Paul Schweinzer
We propose a simple mechanism capable of achieving international agreement on averting the threat... more We propose a simple mechanism capable of achieving international agreement on averting the threat of global warming. It employs a contest creating incentives among participating nations to exert both efficient productive efforts and efficient emis sions reductive efforts. Participation in the scheme is voluntary and individually rational. The scheme requires no principal or enforcing penalties. All rules are mutually agreeable
Discussion Paper Series of Sfb Tr 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Jun 1, 2006
We study the alternating-offer bargaining problem of sharing a common value pie under incomplete ... more We study the alternating-offer bargaining problem of sharing a common value pie under incomplete information on both sides and no depreciation between two identical players. We characterise the essentially unique perfect Bayesian equilibrium of this game which turns out to be in gradually increasing offers. (JEL C73,
We address the scheduling problem of reordering an existing queue into its efficient order throug... more We address the scheduling problem of reordering an existing queue into its efficient order through trade. To that end, we consider individually rational and balanced budget direct and indirect mechanisms. We show that this class of mechanisms allows us to form efficient queues provided that existing property rights for the service are small enough to enable trade between the agents.
Journal of Economic Theory, 2016
We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership str... more We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership structures. For this purpose, we view individuals jointly engaging in productive processes-a 'team'-as endowed with individual and privately held information on the joint production process. Once individual information is shared, team members decide individually on the effort they exert in the joint production process. This effort, however, is not contractible; only the joint output (or profit) of the team can be observed. Our central question is whether or not incentives can be provided to a team in this environment such that team members communicate their private information and exert efficient productive efforts on the basis of this communication. Our main result shows that there exists a simple ranking-based contract which implements both desiderata in a wide set of situations.
The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2015
Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch ge... more Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen. Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your personal and scholarly purposes. You are not to copy documents for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the documents publicly, to make them publicly available on the internet, or to distribute or otherwise use the documents in public. If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence.
Discussion Paper Series of Sfb Tr 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems, Jun 1, 2006
We consider a Rothschild-Stiglitz-Spence labour market screening model and employ a centralised m... more We consider a Rothschild-Stiglitz-Spence labour market screening model and employ a centralised mechanism to coordinate the efficient matching of workers to firms. This mechanism can be thought of as operated by a recruitment agency, an employment office or head hunter. In a centralised descending-bid, multi-item procurement auction, workers submit wage-bids for each job and are assigned stable jobs as equilibrium outcome. We compare this outcome to independent, sequential hiring by firms and conclude that, in general, a stable assignment can only be implemented if firms coordinate to some extent. (JEL C78, D44, E24, J41.
This note analyzes the problem Captain MacWhirr faces in Joseph Conrad's novel Typhoon as an impl... more This note analyzes the problem Captain MacWhirr faces in Joseph Conrad's novel Typhoon as an implementation problem under incomplete information. We identify a sufficient condition under which each player has a unique rationalizable strategy. In this unique rationalizable outcome, truthful revelation by each player is observed.
We use a simple balanced budget contest to collect taxes on a private good in order to finance a ... more We use a simple balanced budget contest to collect taxes on a private good in order to finance a pure public good. We show that—with an appropriately chosen structure of winning probabilities—this contest can provide the public good efficiently and without distorting private consumption. We provide extensions to multiple public goods and private taxation sources, asymmetric preferences, and show the mechanism's robustness across these settings. (JEL C7, D7.
Games and Economic Behavior, 2015
We consider implementation problems under incomplete information without incentive compatibility.... more We consider implementation problems under incomplete information without incentive compatibility. If the social choice functions do not satisfy incentive compatibility, full implementation is unattainable via the existing approaches. By focusing on the actual problems from Typhoon by Joseph Conrad and The Traveler's Dilemma by Kaushik Basu (1994, 2007), we provide a new approach to such implementation problems. For each problem, we first construct a mechanism which takes advantage of a unique feature of these problems, i.e., the planners possess some information regarding the actual state. We then provide a sufficient condition on players' beliefs for each problem under which every player has a unique rationalizable action. The conditions we identify however depend on the informational structures, suggesting that obtaining a general result within this type of frameworks is nontrivial.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
We propose a simple mechanism capable of achieving international agreement on averting the threat... more We propose a simple mechanism capable of achieving international agreement on averting the threat of global warming. It employs a contest creating incentives among participating nations to exert both efficient productive efforts and efficient emissions reductive efforts. Participation in the scheme is voluntary and turns out to be individually rational if the alternative is no agreement at all. The scheme requires no principal or enforcing penalties. All rules are mutually agreeable and are unanimously adopted if proposed. (JEL C7, D7, H4, Q5.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
We analyse the all-pay auction with incomplete information and variance-averse bidders. We charac... more We analyse the all-pay auction with incomplete information and variance-averse bidders. We characterise the symmetric equilibrium for general distributions of valuations and any number of bidders. Variance aversion is a sufficient assumption to predict that high-valuation bidders increase their bids relative to the risk-neutral case while low types decrease their bid. Considering an asymmetric two-player environment with uniform valuations, we show that a more variance-averse type always bids higher than her less variance-averse counterpart. Utilising our analytical bidding functions we discuss all-pay auctions with variance-averse bidders from a designer's perspective. We extend our basic model to include noisy signals and allow for the possibility of variance-seeking preferences and type-dependent attitudes towards risk.
Pa ar re en nt ta al l C Co o-I Im mm mu un ni iz za at ti io on n H Hy yp po ot th he es si is s... more Pa ar re en nt ta al l C Co o-I Im mm mu un ni iz za at ti io on n H Hy yp po ot th he es si is s" " M Mi ig gu ue el l P Po or rt te el la a P Pa au ul l S Sc ch hw we ei in nz ze er r NIPE WP 18/ 2013 " "T Th he e P Pa ar re en nt ta al l C Co o-I Im mm mu un ni iz za at ti io on n H Hy yp po ot th he es si is s" " M Mi ig gu ue el l P Po or rt te el la a P Pa au ul l S Sc ch hw we ei in nz ze er r N NI IP PE E *
ABSTRACT We revisit the classical result that taxation of private consumption is distortionary an... more ABSTRACT We revisit the classical result that taxation of private consumption is distortionary and therefore precludes the efficient provision of public goods. We introduce a nonlinear consumption tax which we call a `tax lottery'. Under this scheme, an ad-valorem consumption tax is supplemented with a lottery in which consumers can win cash prizes. The winning probabilities in this lottery depend on all consumers' private good consumption decisions. We show that for a given ad-valorem tax, an appropriately designed lottery can implement an efficient allocation in pure-strategy Nash equilibrium. The lottery component corrects the distortion in private consumption due to the ad-valorem tax, while the resulting tax revenue is sufficient to efficiently provide the public good and pay out the lottery prize.
Review of Economic Design, 2008
We consider a Rothschild-Stiglitz-Spence labour market model and employ a centralised mechanism t... more We consider a Rothschild-Stiglitz-Spence labour market model and employ a centralised mechanism to coordinate the efficient matching of workers to firms. This mechanism can be thought of as operated by a recruitment agency, an employment office or head hunter. In a centralised descending-bid, multi-item procurement auction, workers submit wage-bids for each job and are assigned stable jobs as equilibrium outcome. We compare this outcome to independent, sequential hiring by firms and conclude that, in general, a stable assignment can only be implemented if firms coordinate to some extent. (JEL C78,
The RAND Journal of Economics, 2009
We analyze incentive problems in team and partnership structures where the only available informa... more We analyze incentive problems in team and partnership structures where the only available information to condition a contract on is a partial and noisy ranking which specifies who comes first in efforts among the competing partners. This enables us to ensure both first best efficient effort levels for all partners and the redistribution of output only among partners. Our efficiency result is obtained for a wide range of cost and production functions. (JEL C7, D7, D8, L2.
Public Choice, 2012
We show that the optimal prize structure of symmetric n-player Tullock tournaments assigns the en... more We show that the optimal prize structure of symmetric n-player Tullock tournaments assigns the entire prize pool to the winner, provided that a symmetric pure strategy equilibrium exists. If such an equilibrium fails to exist under the winner-take-all structure, we construct the optimal prize structure which improves existence conditions by dampening efforts. If no such optimal equilibrium exists, no symmetric pure strategy equilibrium induces positive efforts.
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Papers by Paul Schweinzer