This paper studies the effect of firm and country reputation on exports when buyers cannot observe quality prior to purchase. Firm-level demand is determined by expected quality, which is driven by the dynamics of consumer learning through experience and the country of origin’s reputation for...

In the present article, Tiebout meets Laffont and Tirole in the land of fiscal federalism. A non-trivial Principal–Multi-Agent model is used to characterize the optimal intergovernmental grant schedule, when the cost of local public goods depends on hidden characteristics and actions of...

Entrants may provide information to a regulator, even when they cannot be regulated. With correlated costs, yardstick-like regulatory contracts based on the output of unregulated firms nullify information rents. But they give strong incentives to the regulated incumbent to bribe competitors. A...

The paper investigates the relationship between bank interest rate margins and collateral for loans issued to new ventures. The analysis finds a convex U-shaped relationship. The results indicate that while provision of collateral initially reduces bank exposure to risk (through security, more...

The traditional theory of monopolistic screening tackles individual self-selection but does not address the possibility that buyers could form a coalition to coordinate their purchases and to reallocate the goods. In this paper, we design the optimal sale mechanism which takes into account both...

Entrants may provide information to a regulator, even when they cannot be regulated. With correlated costs, yardstick-like regulatory contracts based on the output of unregulated firms nullify information rents. But they give strong incentives to the regulated incumbent to bribe competitors. A...