The establishment of an asking, or ceiling, price from which reductions can be bargained is a common selling practice. For a monopolist seller of a single object, this article characterizes the best such ceiling price and shows that its use is optimal among all incentive-compatible mechanisms in...

Disclosure of lobbying activity has become much more timely and stringent in the US, and many demand similar regulation also for lobbying in the European Union. Disclosure informs voters about a lobbyist’s activity, but it also informs rival lobbying groups, with strategic consequences. Under...

Increasingly, lobbying groups are subject to transparency requirements, obliging them to provide detailed information about their business. We study the effect this transparency policy has on the nature of lobbying competition. Under mild conditions, mandated transparency leads to an increase in...

Organizational theory suggests that authority should lie in the hands of those with information, yet the power to transfer authority is rarely absolute in practice. We investigate the validity and application of this advice in a model of optimal contracting between an uninformed principal and...

Recommended readings (Machine generated): Michael R. Baye and John Morgan (2001), 'Information Gatekeepers on the Internet and the Competitiveness of Homogeneous Product Markets', American Economic Review, 91 (3), June, 454-74 -- Jean-Charles Rochet and Jean Tirole (2003), 'Platform Competition...