We study learning in a decentralized pairwise adverse selection economy, where buyers have access to the quality of traded goods but not to the quality of non- traded goods. Buyers categorize ask prices in order to predict quality as a function of ask price. The categorization is endogenously...

A central result in the literature on bargaining with asymmetric information is that the uninformed party (buyer) can screen the informed party (seller) over time. Screening eliminates trade failures that are otherwise common in the presence of adverse selection, but the downside of the...

We study competitive nonlinear pricing in a model involving simultaneously horizontal and vertical product differentiation. It is a particular case of a more general model of optimal contracting with uncertain participation that we study elsewhere (Rochet-Stole (1997))

This paper considers a firm whose potential employees have private information on both their productivity and the extent of their fairness concerns. Fairness is modelled as inequity aversion, where fair-minded workers suffer if their colleagues get more income net of production costs. Screening...

This paper considers a firm whose potential employees have private information on both their productivity and the extent of their fairness concerns. Fairness is modelled as inequity aversion, where fair-minded workers suffer if their colleagues get more income net of production costs. Screening...

In markets with asymmetric information, where equilibria are often inefficient, bargaining can help promote welfare. We design an experiment to examine the impact of competition and price transparency in such settings. Consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that competition...

I study a model of blockholder short-termism, where each blockholder (e.g., activist shareholder) has a stake in a different firm and can sell before the impact of his actions on firm value is realized. I find that the existence of value-destroying blockholders can increase average firm value,...

We study the distribution of a fixed amount of "favors" by an incumbent politician between two pressure groups, each of them offering to the agent a campaign contribution contingent on the quantity of "favors" received. Assuming that the total amount supplied is a private information of the...

An adverse selection model of firm reputation is developed in which short-lived clients purchase services from firms operated by overlapping generations of agents. A firm's only asset is its name, or reputation, and trade of names is not observed by clients. As a result, names are traded in all...

An adverse selection model of firm reputation is developed in which short-lived clients purchase services from firms operated by overlapping generations of agents. A firm's only asset is its name, or reputation, and trade of names is not observed by clients. As a result, names are traded in all...