ALT We develop a dynamic three-sector model in which Marx's aggregate equalities (total price equals total value and total profit equals total surplus value) are treated as strict conservation constraints throughout capital reallocation and technical diffusion. Three price-value coefficients are determined by the two aggregate equalities and a closure that sets one sector's price-based profit rate equal to the contemporaneous value-based average (the anchor). Before innovation, capital inflow expands the receiving sector's output and, under both anchors, lowers its unit price and excess profitability. This endogenous fall in price as output rises supports a two-timescale reading: demand-related price movements may precede slower adjustment through capital mobility. A labour-saving, capital-intensifying innovation generates temporary extra surplus value, revalues committed capital, and changes the economy-wide profit rate. At constant real wages, the final uniform rate rises, consistent wit

ALT A decision maker may have several information sources available and choose which one to consult only after learning the decision problem she faces. When is one such set of sources uniformly more valuable than another? For unrestricted Bayesian decision problems, we show that the answer can be stated entirely in terms of Blackwell comparisons. Form a tagged mixture by drawing a source independently of the state and revealing both its identity and its signal. One source set is more valuable in every decision problem if and only if each tagged mixture of the second source set is Blackwell dominated by some tagged mixture of the first. The result applies to compact, possibly infinite source sets and general signal spaces. It also has an exact quantitative counterpart: the largest normalized value shortfall is the directed Le Cam deficiency between the source sets' tagged hulls. The analogous program for monotone decision problems reveals a boundary. We call the passage from problem-by-prob

ALT Cursed players understand the distribution of opponents' actions and the distribution of the payoff-relevant state, conditional on their own information, but respond as if the two were independent. Cursed equilibrium additionally requires statistically correct beliefs about the distribution of play. We propose a solution concept that separates the bias from equilibrium: cursed rationalizability iteratively deletes every action that is not a cursed response to a conjecture about opponents' surviving play. The cursed-rationalizable set is the interim correlated rationalizable set of a virtual game, in which payoffs are averaged over the state. Under strategic complements, cursed rationalizability yields the same bounds on behavior as cursed equilibrium. A cautious refinement, the analog of admissibility, delivers sharp predictions in the laboratory games that documented the winner's curse.

ALT We study a continuous-time game in which two firms choose how quickly to advance their capabilities while an exogenous safety threshold advances at a fixed rate. When the capability frontier (max of firms' capabilities) exceeds the safety threshold, all firms are exposed to common disaster that arrives at a hazard rate increasing in the capability-safety difference. We characterize Markov perfect equilibria in terms of the disaster risk, how quickly safety advances, and flow payoffs: when they are low, only racing is an equilibrium; when they are intermediate, racing and pacing coexist; when they are high, only pacing survives. Across all subgame perfect equilibria, low risk induces perpetual racing while high risk rules it out and we bound the probability of disaster across all SPE. If internal capabilities are hidden with a fixed lag until deployment, it is harder to sustain pacing which highlights the importance of transparency about internal capabilities.

ALT We formulate a complete-information two-player strategic timing game that we refer to as the reverse war of attrition (RWoA). Waiting yields a strictly positive current rent, and the player that outwaits its rival may earn an even higher flow. However, remaining in the waiting state when the rival has moved triggers a discrete late-mover penalty. The distinctive primitive is a player-owned productive buffer which enables the rent-generating activity while waiting, but is degraded by this activity. A rival's move can raise the waiting rent and accelerate depletion. We characterize a unique symmetric equilibrium. We apply RWoA to Bertrand competition in a homogeneous-good market, where vintage inventory serves as the buffer clock for timing repricing. We also discuss competitive maintenance. As an extension, we replicate the bilateral game across a continuum of disjoint heterogeneous local markets and, via the exact law of large numbers, derive deterministic aggregate state shares.

ALT Matching theory has largely evolved around two canonical rules: deferred acceptance (DA) in the marriage problem and top trading cycles (TTC) in the object reallocation problem. Although the two rules operate through different procedures, we show that they rest on a common axiomatic foundation. In the marriage problem, stability decomposes into individual rationality and pair rationality, and a classic result characterizes DA by these two axioms together with strategy-proofness for the proposing side. We show that individual rationality, pair rationality, and strategy-proofness likewise characterize TTC. More strongly, three weak rationality axioms concerning individuals and pairs, together with strategy-proofness, uniquely determine TTC. Even weak rationality requirements therefore rule out strategy-proof implementation when there is a cap on the size of exchange cycles.

ALT Matching mechanisms differ in how much of an agent's preference ranking must be determined and reported to obtain a particular object. A mechanism is singleton-attainable (SA) if every object that an agent can obtain through some report can also be obtained by reporting only that object as acceptable. With an SA mechanism, once an attainable object has been identified, the agent need not rank or report any other object. Singleton-attainability identifies a distinct dimension in matching theory and market design: transparent access to attainable outcomes, separate from incentives, stability, welfare or equity. We establish general conditions for SA and derive its strategic implications. Top-lift invariance and truncation invariance together imply SA, while strategyproofness and stability each imply SA. By contrast, no Pareto improvement over a strategyproof, individually rational, and non-wasteful mechanism is SA. In particular, every Pareto improvement over Deferred Acceptance violates

ALT Macroeconomic crises are rare, yet they can have large effects on asset prices. Because the probability of entering a crisis from normal times is small relative to the probability of recovery, the dynamics are nearly reducible: setting the crisis-entry probability to zero makes crisis states unreachable from normal states. We develop a graph-theoretic and spectral analysis of long-run pricing under reducible and nearly reducible dynamics. We show that, at the reducible limit, physical and pricing dynamics induce the same classes of economic states and accessibility relations, but rank their long-run importance differently: by recurrence and by class-specific pricing rates. Moreover, a claim's price depends only on its pricing corridor—the classes of states lying on directed paths from the initial state to states where the payoff is positive—and the highest class-specific pricing rate within this corridor determines the claim's long-run pricing rate. When the reducible-limit corridor ex

ALT This paper develops a model of identifiable smooth ambiguity in a finite-state Anscombe-Aumann framework in which ambiguity perception and the ambiguity-attitude representation may depend on the act's endogenous certainty-equivalent utility level. The framework separates two sources of utility-level dependence that standard smooth-ambiguity models hold fixed. Neutral-transfer experiments within revealed cells recover conditional beliefs, while compensation experiments across cells recover cell weights and locally revealed ambiguity-attitude scales. These objects have distinct behavioral content. After the within-level structure is extended globally, ambiguity perception is identified at each certainty-equivalent level, whereas variation in admissible level-specific global attitude indices need not by itself reflect behaviorally identified variation in ambiguity attitude. Cross-level restrictions determine when the locally revealed attitude scales can instead be represented by one commo

ALT Exponential Second-Order Expected Utility (SOEU) underlies the entropic approach to model uncertainty. This paper explores in what sense that functional form is essential. In the misspecification-robust Smooth Ambiguity criterion, let a single parameter govern both the model-level robustness and the ambiguity-averse aggregation across models Cerreia-Vioglio, Hansen, Maccheroni, and Marinacci (2026). The two-layer criterion then equals Exponential SOEU for every compact set of models and every second-order prior, with the Bayesian predictive measure as the baseline. The main results are converses. On the aggregator side, matched curvature is necessary: at a fixed curvature no other continuous, strictly increasing aggregator delivers the reduction, and with mismatched curvature there are a model set and a prior for which no single-layer entropic value, at any curvature and any baseline, reproduces the criterion. On the cost side, within the power-divergence family, which contains chi-squ

ALT A collective rule must often choose a public outcome on a constrained boundary. We characterize truthful choice with diagonal unanimity on the entire boundary of any compact full-dimensional strictly convex body in finite dimension at least two. On the full domain of linear support preferences, ordinary individual strategy-proofness and diagonal unanimity force the rule to select one fixed participant's preferred point at every profile. The population is any fixed finite nonempty set. No Pareto condition, boundary smoothness, or continuity or measurability of the rule is assumed. If interior outcomes are allowed instead, two or more participants can use positive fixed weighted averages of preferred points for truthful non-dictatorial compromise on the same type domain. The proof derives regularity from the two agents' incentive inequalities, transports a common support-measure bound across reports, and makes every convexified attainable menu a Minkowski summand of the feasible body. Bo

ALT This paper studies agency problems when both parties worry that the model linking action to output is misspecified. With observable actions, an optimal contract is linear in output, so performance pay arises solely to share misspecification exposure, the slope reflects the parties' relative robustness concerns, and its allocation is Pareto efficient. With hidden actions, this sharing rule survives and incentives add a nonlinear correction. Misspecification concerns can polarize effort by making intermediate actions impossible to implement. Moreover, ambiguity across competing models has asymmetric effects: uncertainty about desired actions raises the principal's payoff, whereas uncertainty about deviations can lower it.

ALT Consumers can invest resources to understand and avoid their behavioral mistakes, and their incentives to do so depend on the market consequences of remaining naive. We incorporate this feedback between consumers' cognitive states and market outcomes into a general contracting model. Firms face a trade-off between the depth and reach of exploitation: deeper exploitation raises profit from a naive consumer but induces greater cognitive investment, promoting sophistication and shrinking the exploitable consumer base. This trade-off disciplines exploitation and can cause policies that benefit consumers when cognition is fixed to backfire when cognition is endogenous.

ALT We study how timestamps affect dynamic disclosure. At a random date, a sender privately obtains hard evidence about an evolving binary state and chooses when to disclose it. With timestamps, the unique equilibrium features immediate good-evidence disclosure and timestamp-dependent bad-evidence delay. Without timestamps, high priors relative to impatience generate a stock of undisclosed good evidence, which is stochastically purged before permanent transparency. High impatience yields immediate good-evidence disclosure, while bad evidence can be arbitrarily delayed and disclosed in bursts. Timestamps prevent pretending old good evidence is fresh and certify bad evidence is old, accelerating good-evidence disclosure and facilitating bad-evidence disclosure.

ALT Institutions often face constraints richer than a single capacity. Protecting the priority of a student who cannot be accommodated may then block a lower-priority student who fits. We introduce COP-and-Choose, a cumulative offer process followed by a choice step, and show that its greedy version, which skips such blockers, leaves no student worse off than any fair matching or Knapsack Deferred Acceptance (KDA). Greedy is the unique consistent rule preserving this guarantee. With substitutability and size monotonicity at every school, greedy is strategy-proof and Pareto-undominated among strategy-proof mechanisms. If either fails at a school, one additional capacity-one school yields a market where, under every proposal order, greedy is manipulable and no strategy-proof mechanism weakly Pareto dominates it. In a three-resource refugee-resettlement calibration with simulated preferences, 19–33 percent of families gain relative to KDA and none lose, while 21–83 percent strongly envy anoth

ALT A government may ask for a high tax because it faces a genuine expense. The same demand can also be made by a government that intends to keep the proceeds. We study this ambiguity in a two-period reputation model with privately observed spending needs and an endogenous tax base. The opportunist chooses between outright confiscation and levies that an honest government might impose. We characterize the three possible regimes through a single equilibrium equation. A mean-preserving spread of legitimate needs weakly raises the opportunist's lifetime value, with a strict increase precisely when the spread changes the upper tail relevant for mimicry. We then give a necessary and sufficient curvature condition for this ordering to extend to a general reputational continuation prize. Verification reduces the value of concealment, but also changes how the opportunist extracts. In the benchmark economy, greater auditing weakly lowers current citizen welfare, even before audit costs, while impro

ALT This paper studies social learning when buying access to previous decisions also determines whose decision enters the record. Individuals first receive private information and then decide whether to pay for access. A positive price selects relatively weak private beliefs. With one founding observation, every buyer copies it, and the record acquires no further information. With a richer initial history, buyers can disagree and the record can improve; nevertheless, a price bounded away from zero prevents complete learning, even with unbounded private beliefs. We then consider a rule under which a buyer makes a preliminary choice before access and a revised choice afterward. A positive probability of implementing the preliminary choice makes it follow the private signal. Retaining both choices restores complete learning under a fixed effective fee or pooled myopic pricing, including with bounded beliefs. The rule reduces willingness to pay and sacrifices some current decision accuracy. A

ALT This paper provides a theoretical framework to evaluate the trade-off between the self-regulated peer review system and independent government inspection (PCAOB) in the auditing profession. We model the peer review system as a Judgment Regime, where a stakeholder utilizes professional expertise, captured as a private signal, to make ex-post decisions on verifying audit failures. In contrast, PCAOB inspection is modeled as a Commitment Regime, where the stakeholder lacks private information but can commit ex-ante to a predetermined level of verification. We find that the Judgment Regime benefits from a resource-allocation effect and a deterrence effect driven by informed verification, whereas the Commitment Regime deters audit failures through the first-mover advantage of ex-ante commitment. Our analysis demonstrates that the stakeholder prefers the peer review system if and only if the private signal is sufficiently informative. Furthermore, comparative statics reveal that higher verif

ALT Forecasts guide decisions, but an expert who privately values the decision may misreport beliefs to influence it. We study contracts that jointly elicit the expert's belief about a verifiable state and her stake in a binary action. When agents with different stakes can hold the same belief, exact belief-only IC forces the action to ignore the report. Joint screening permits responsiveness but may require implementation rent. For thresholds, minimum implementation rent equals the distribution-weighted positive curvature of the belief-dependent cutoff. Optimal threshold design is rent-adjusted concavification. We give sufficient conditions for unrestricted threshold optimality and, beyond them, bounds and a direct optimality certificate.

ALT Suppose an economy moves continuously along a closed path of fundamentals and returns exactly to its initial state. A regular Walrasian equilibrium price followed continuously along that path need not return to itself. For every number of commodities L≥3, we construct a closed one-parameter family of pure-exchange economies in which all preferences are fixed, only three individual endowments vary, and aggregate resources remain constant. Along the loop, two regular equilibrium-price branches are exchanged while a third returns to itself; at the end, every economic primitive is exactly as it was initially. The construction uses at most 2L+2 consumers. We also provide an exact realization with at most 2L consumers in which all endowments are fixed and only one preference varies; the two families generate identical aggregate excess demand. The key realization problem is parametric: classical aggregate-realization results guarantee an economy at each fixed parameter value, but not a contin