Organizing the productive efforts of firms participating in a joint venture involves assigning firms to tasks according to abilities. A multidimensional incentive problem arises when abilities are private information. In any equilibrium, it is better to be a firm who is a specialist rather than...

We analyze the preferences of a risk-averse seller over the class of "standard" auctions with symmetric and risk-neutral bidders. Assuming that buyers' private signals are independently distributed, we find that a sealed-bid first-price auction with an appropriately set reserve price is...

In February 2008, British Telecommunications (BT) introduced automatically renewing, or ‘rollover’, contracts into the UK market for fixed-voice telephone service. These contracts included a 12-month Minimum Contract Period (MCP) with associated Early Termination Charges (ETCs). Unless...