What money can't buy: allocations with priority lists, lotteries and queues

Daniele Condorelli

No 1482, Discussion Papers from Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science

Abstract: I study the welfare optimal allocation of a number of identical and indivisible objects to a set of heterogeneous risk-neutral agents under the hypothesis that money is not available. Agents have independent private values, which represent the maximum time that they are will- ing to wait in line to obtain a good. A priority list, which ranks agents according to their expected values, is optimal when hazard rates of the distributions of values are increasing. Queues, which allocates the ob- ject to those who wait in line the longest, are optimal in a symmetric setting with decreasing hazard rates.

Keywords: rationing; queues; priority lists; lotteries. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D45 D82 H42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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