This note shows that when the designer of a contest wishes the winner have high ability, she is better off giving a head start to one of the contestants even if they are ex-ante identical. If the contestants are ex-ante asymmetric, the designer should give a head start to the one who is more likely to have high ability. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This paper studies information transmission in social surveys where a welfare maximizing decision maker communicates with a random sample of individuals from a large population who have heterogeneous preferences. The population distribution of preferences is unknown and has to be estimated, based on answers from the respondents. The decision maker cannot identify the true distribution of preferences even if the sample size becomes arbitrarily large, since the respondents have incentive to "exaggerate" their preferences especially as the sample size becomes larger and each respondent has weaker influence on the decision. The quality of communication with each respondent may improve as the sample size becomes smaller, and thus we identify the trade-off between the quality and quantity of communication. We show that the decision maker may prefer to sample a smaller number of individuals when the prior is weaker. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This article studies information transmission between multiple agents with heterogeneous preferences and a welfare maximising decision maker who chooses the quality or quantity of a public good (e.g. size of a public project; pace of lectures in a classroom; government regulation) that is consumed by all of them. As the number of agents becomes larger, the quality of information transmission diminishes. The use of binary messages (e.g. 'yes or no' ) is shown to be a robust mode of communication even when the preferences and policy space are non-binary.

This paper proposes an implicit control mechanism of managers inside the firm. We argue that the need to motivate workers may make it beneficial for a self-interested, short-sighted manager to pursue the long-term viability of a firm. When the firm is in a stable environment, this implicit control mechanism may not contradict shareholder value maximization. However, when the firm needs restructuring, this mechanism diminishes firm value. We discuss when external governance is desirable, and when it is not. Our model also offers economic explanations for some related issues in managerial behavior, such as restructuring aversion, survival motive, and excessive risk aversion.