We analyze credit market equilibrium when banks screen loan applicants. When banks have a convex cost function of screening, a pure strategy equilibrium exists where banks optimally set interest rates at the same level as their competitors. This result complements Broecker's (1990) analysis,...

This paper provides a framework for explicitly modeling the information gathering activities of potential entrants and analyzes how entry behavior is affected by these activities. We assume that information is acquired secretly and that firms face uncertainty about more than one variable. When...

Traditional economic wisdom says that free entry in a market will drive profits down to zero. This paper shows that profits may remain bounded away from zero when firms have to make a negligible small investment to learn the demand.

We formally incorporate the option to gather information into a game and thus endogenize the information structure. We ask whether models with exogenous information structures are robust with respect to this endogenization. Any Nash equilibrium of the game with information acquisition induces a...

We describe an experiment where buyers and sellers, endowed with heterogeneous deadlines, are randomly matched and attempt to reach agreement over the division of a fixed surplus. The theoretical models that provide the background for this experiment have been developed in recent papers by...

We consider a dynamic model where traders in each period are matched randomly into pairs who then bargain about the division of a fixed surplus. When agreement is reached the traders leave the market. Traders who do not come to an agreement return next period in which they will be matched again,...

This paper analyzes bargaining outcomes when agents do not have stationary time preferences (as represented by a constant discount factor) but are pressed by firm deadlines. We consider a dynamic model where traders with heterogeneous deadlines are matched randomly into pairs who then bargain...

We study a version of the standard Kyle (85) model with endogenous information acquisition and we find that equilibria exist with free entry in which speculators make positive profits. Moreover, these equilibria are robust.

In the light of the exponential growth of the Internet and World Wide Web, this paper describes, in some detail, existing agents and multiagents applications in the context of e-commerce, and suggests a research agenda for economists in response to these changes in technology and lifestyle....

With existing technology, it is already possible for personal agents to schedule meetings for their users, to write the small print of an agreement, and for agents to search the Internet for the cheapest price. But serious negotiation cranks the difficulty of the problem up several notches. In...