We study an inside patent holder's optimal licensing policy when it has imperfect information about the value of the patent to its rival. The patent holder can choose any two-part licensing fee with either per unit or ad valorem royalties. We demonstrate that the equilibrium will be either a...

When procuring multiple products from competing firms, a buyer may choose separate purchase, pure bundling, or mixed bundling. We show that pure bundling will generate higher buyer surplus than both separate purchase and mixed bundling, provided that trade for each good is likely to be...

We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership structures. For this purpose, we view individuals jointly engaging in productive processes -- a 'team' -- as endowed with individual and privately held information on the joint production process. Once...

We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership structures. For this purpose, we view individuals jointly engaging in productive processes—a ‘team’—as endowed with individual and privately held information on the joint production process....

Anton and Yao (1989) show that in split-award procurement auctions bidders coordinate their bids to sustain high buyer price. We relax their assumption that the buyer has full information about the suppliers’ production costs and restore the coordination outcome.

This paper studies procurement contracts where a buyer can either divide full production among multiple suppliers or award the entire production to a single supplier. We examine the effect of using multiple suppliers on investment incentives. In a framework of generalized second-price auctions...

This article analyzes simple rules for dissolving a common value partnership in which one partner holds proprietary information. The winner’s bid auction and the loser’s bid auction are payoff equivalent and both favor the informed partner. If it is verifiable which partner is informed, the...

The literature on partnership dissolution generally takes the dissolution decision as given and examines whether the outcome is efficient. A well-known result is that <InlineEquation ID="IEq1"> <EquationSource Format="TEX">$$k+1$$</EquationSource> <EquationSource Format="MATHML"> <math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <mrow> <mi>k</mi> <mo>+</mo> <mn>1</mn> </mrow> </math> </EquationSource> </InlineEquation>-price auctions dissolve a partnership efficiently when the share structure is sufficiently close to equal....</equationsource></equationsource></inlineequation>

We study a partnership that anticipates its possible dissolution. In our model, partnerships form in order to take advantage of complementary skills; although new opportunities may arise that make partners’ skills useless. We characterize the optimal, incentive-compatible partnership contract...