A representative committee by approval balloting

A new voting rule for electing committees is described. Specifically, we use approval balloting and propose a new voting procedure that guarantees that if there is a committee that represents (with a given proportion of representatives) all of the existing voters, then the selected committee has to represent all of voters in at least the…

Folk solution for simple minimum cost spanning tree problems

A minimum cost spanning tree problem analyzes how to efficiently connect a group of individuals to a source. Once the efficient tree is obtained, the addressed question is how to allocate the total cost among the involved agents. One prominent solution in allocating this minimum cost is the so-called Folk solution. Unfortunately, in general, the…

Strategic sharing of a costly network

We study minimum cost spanning tree problems for a set of users connected to a source. Prim’s algorithm provides a way of finding the minimum cost tree m. This has led to several definitions in the literature, regarding how to distribute the cost. These rules propose different cost allocations, which can be understood as compensations…

Dual sourcing with price discovery

We consider a (standard) reverse auction for dual sourcing and propose to determine both the providers’ shares and the reserve price endogenously, depending on the suppliers’ bids. Our benchmark considers a two-stage game of complete information. After a first round of bidding, the two most competitive suppliers advance to the second stage and compete again…

Beyond the Spanish MIR with consent: (Hidden) cooperation and coordination in matching

Sequential mechanisms to solve matching problems are useful to promote (hidden) cooperation between agents. Taking as a starting point the MIRC mechanism, employed in Spain to match medical students and residency programs in privately owned hospitals, we find that: (1) In the current system, where the number of students that each program might enroll is…

Fair student placement

We revisit the concept of fairness in the Student Placement framework. We declare an allocation as α-equitable if no agent can propose an alternative allocation that nobody else might argue to be inequitable. It turns out that α-equity is compatible with efficiency. Our analysis fills a gap in the literature by giving normative support to…

Convergence in a Dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin Model with Land

Convergence among nations that share the same preferences and technologies is a key result of the closed-economy neoclassical growth framework that has received substantial support in the data. However, Heckscher–Ohlin versions of the two-sector neoclassical growth model predict that nations that differ in their capital–labor ratios may not converge to the same steady state, even…

Neoclassical Growth and the Natural Resource Curse Puzzle

We advance a novel mechanism that helps to explain the puzzling evidence on the natural resource curse. The new channel arises in a standard dynamic Heckscher–Ohlin model composed of small-open economies that take international output prices as given. Within this framework, a more capital-intensive primary sector implies that natural-resource abundant economies grow more slowly along…

The Dynamics of Heterogeneous Political Party Support and Egocentric Economic Evaluations: the Scottish Case

We explore the dynamics of the Scottish National Party (SNP) support using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) during 1999-06. We study the relative importance of political sentiments and egocentric economic evaluations by disentangling the effects of state dependence and unobserved heterogeneity by gender. Egocentric economic evaluations constitute an important determinant of SNP support over the entire period, being this…

Impacto de la Ley de Dependencia sobre el gasto autonómico en servicios sociales

Objetivo: En este trabajo se cuestiona si el desarrollo del Sistema de Autonomía y Atención a la Dependencia (SAAD) contribuyó a incrementar el volumen de recursos del sistema público de servicios sociales (efecto desplazamiento) o, por el contrario, si dicho desarrollo se produjo a costa del resto de prestaciones de servicios sociales (efecto sustitución). Método:…