This paper analyzes bidding behavior in a multi period multiple unit auction. While bidders are ex ante symmetric, the first period outcome translates the second period game to a game between asymmetric bidders. The first period outcome determines who will be a strong or a weak bidder in the...

Are lending contracts between international financial institutions (IFIs) and sovereign borrowers optimal? To address this question this paper builds on two ideas. First, the prospect of future debt relief can make it profitable for an IFI to continue lending even if lending contracts are...

In this paper we investigate the principal-multi agent relationship with moral hazard where a risk neutral principal contracts with multiple risk averse agents whose actions are unobservable to the principal. We show that the well--known trade--off between incentive and risk sharing can be...

Many people are fired from their jobs for poor performance. However, it is difficult to distinguish whether they are fired because they are not well suited for their job (sorting explanation) or because the firms are trying to provide incentives for effort (incentive explanation). This paper...

In principal-agent settings with moral hazard, the fact that agents are altruistic vis-a-vis third parties (e.g. their family) modifies incentive costs. We derive sufficient conditions for the principal to benefit from altruism. They bear on how altruism affects the agent's marginal rate of...

In this paper, an infinitely-repeated Bertrand game is considered. The model has a two-tier relationship; two firms make a self-enforced collusive agreement and each firm writes a law-enforced contract to its privately-informed agent. The main finding is that in optimal collusion, interaction...

For an N players coordination games, Tanaka (2000) proved that the notion of N/2 stability defined by Schaffer (1988) is a necessary and sufficient condition for long run equilibrium in an evolutionary process with mutations (in the sense of Kandori, et. al. (1993)). We argue that the critical...

The paper studies equilibrium selection in supermodular games based on a class of perfect foresight dynamics, introduced by Matsui and Matsuyama (JET 1995) and further developed by Hofbauer and Sorger (JET 1999, IGTR 2002) and Oyama (JET 2002). A normal form game is played repeatedly in a large...

It is well known that in a two stage duopoly model of product choice with quadratic transportation cost, the firms locate at the extreme endpoints of the market. This paper examines this model in an infinite horizon setting where in the initial period the firms choose locations and in subsequent...

Specialist merchants and traders---agents who mediate the transfer of goods and services between producers and consumers---are central to the economic process, but there are few theoretical models in which the institution of intermediation is an endogenous part of an equilibrium. This paper...