Market Design in Practice

We study dynamic multi-battle contests and examine how contest structure shapes dynamic incentives and rent dissipation. A discouragement effect often prevents full rent dissipation even in long series. We identify exchangeability as a key structural property and establish a necessary-and-sufficient condition for almost-full rent dissipation.

Many assignment systems require applicants to rank multi-attribute bundles. Using laboratory experiments, we compare reporting interfaces and mechanisms, showing that misreporting rises with preference complexity and that sequential choice can improve accuracy, efficiency, and fairness when ranking burdens are salient.

Priority-based allocation often requires eliminating justified envy, but standard mechanisms can conflict with policymaker objectives. Visible fairness evaluates fairness using coarser information, designing message spaces that strategically conceal information that could make desired allocations appear unfair.

We study repeated task assignment as an instrument for providing effort incentives. Because assignment determines both production and incentives, optimal incentives require a strict and evolving priority ranking. This creates differences in average workloads even among otherwise symmetric workers.