A decision-maker relies on information of parties affected by her decision. These parties try to influence her decision by selective disclosure of facts. As is well known from the literature, competition between the informed parties constrains their ability to manipulate information. We depart...

Increasing penalty structures for repeat offenses are ubiquitous in penal codes, despite little empirical or theoretical support. Multi-period models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat...

An antitrust authority deters collusion using fines and a leniency program. Unlike in most of the earlier literature, our firms have imperfect cumulative evidence of the collusion. That is, cartel conviction is not automatic if one firm reports: reporting makes conviction only more likely, the...

The lemons model assumes that owners of used cars have an informational advantage over potential buyers with respect to the quality of their vehicles. Owners of bad cars will try to sell them to unsuspecting buyers while owners of good cars will hold on to theirs. Consequently, the quality of...

Mit dem diesjährigen Nobelpreis für Wirtschaftswissenschaften wurden drei Ökonomen ausgezeichnet, die mit der Informationsökonomik ein neues Forschungsfeld erschlossen. Welche Erkenntnisse wurden mit der Informationsökonomik gewonnen? Welche praktischen Implikationen ergeben sich aus dem...

Die gute Führung von Unternehmen und die Höhe der Managergehälter stehen nach diversen Finanzskandalen von Unternehmen und den Kursmanipulationen am Neuen Markt im Mittelpunkt des öffentlichen Interesses. Im Mai dieses Jahres hat die EU Kommission einen Aktionsplan über „Modernisierung...

In trials witnesses often gain by slanting their testimony. The law tries to elicit the truth from witnesses by cross-examination under threat of criminal prosecution for perjury. As a truth-revealing mechanism, perjury law is crude and ineffective. We develop the mathematical form of a perfect...

In trials witnesses often gain by slanting their testimony. The law tries to elicit the truth from witnesses by cross-examination under threat of criminal prosecution for perjury. As a truth-revealing mechanism, perjury law is crude and ineffective. We develop the mathematical form of a perfect...

Two firms produce a product with a horizontal and a vertical characteristic that we call quality. The difference in the quality levels determines how the firms share the market. Consumers do not observe quality before purchase. Under non-comparative advertising a firm signals its own quality,...

This paper analyzes the frequently-observed phenomenon that firms offer product warranties that are of much shorter duration than the life expectancy of these products. It is shown that competitive equilibria may entail limitation of warranty duration if firms face adverse selection problems...