A principal, requiring a team to implement a project by proposing and jointly executing a technique, may benefit from choosing one with internal disharmony. When superior policy proposition by a member is rewarded with unitary executive control, the benefit of control is increasing in the degree...

Asymmetric information is widely supposed to impair the functioning of markets. We show that the presence of competition may invalidate this intuition. Consider a market in which principals compete for attracting heterogeneous agents by offering contracts. Suppose contracts are exclusive, and...

We take a new look at the comparison between the Stackelberg equilibrium and the Cournot equilibrium. We show that, when the elasticity of the inverse market demand equals the curvature of the inverse market demand weighted by the Lerner Index, a generic Stackelberg leader sets the same quantity...

Simultaneous ascending auctions present agents with various strategic problems, depending on preference structure. As long as bids represent non-repudiable offers, submitting non-contingent bids to separate auctions entails an exposure problem: bidding to acquire a bundle risks the possibility...

This paper investigates how additional ex post private information by the agent affects the equilibrium outcome of the monopolistic screening model. In general, the principal always weakly benefits when the agent receives additional private information after the contracting stage. Instead, both...

We use a simple agency model to clarify and characterize the various avenues through which changes in the level of uncertainty impact the optimal strength of linear incentives. Instead of attempting to characterize different "types" of uncertainty, which has been the approach in the literature...

The paper shows that market power may be an additional cause for the failure of PPP without making the usual assumption of segmentation of national markets. We construct an international multi-currency economy based on the strategic market game model with multiple trading posts, where, besides...

The effect that investment lags have on the uncertainty-investment relationship is studied by modifying the Bar-Ilan and Strange (1996) model to enable an analytical solution. The following results emerge: (i) If the time lag is sufficiently small, uncertainty affects investment negatively; (ii)...

In this paper I apply stochastic stability to compare the effect on welfare of local information and global information when agents adopt imitative behavioral rules. Under global information, agents can potentially imitate anyone, while under local information, the sets of observable agents are...

This paper examines the welfare effects of vertical integration by an "information gatekeeper" into the product market it serves. Both the integrated gatekeeper and competing firms in the product market earn higher profits, but social welfare declines.