Crowdfunding provides innovation in enabling entrepreneurs to contract with consumers before investment. Under aggregate demand uncertainty, this improves screening for valuable projects. Entrepreneurial moral hazard and private cost information threatens this benefit. Despite these threats,...

Crowdfunding provides innovation in enabling entrepreneurs to contract with consumers before investment. Under aggregate demand uncertainty, this improves screening for valuable projects. Entrepreneurial moral hazard and private cost information threatens this benefit. Crowdfunding's...

In markets with quality unobservable to buyers, third-party certification is often the only instrument to increase transparency. While both sellers and buyers have a demand for certification, its role differs fundamentally: sellers use it for signaling, buyers use it for inspection. Seller...

We develop a model to analyze the determinants and effects of an endogenous imperfect transferability of human capital on natives and immigrants. The model reveals that high migration flows and high skill-transferability are mutually interdependent. Moreover, we show that high mobility within a...

SFB 649 Discussion Paper 2006-018 The Bologna Process: How student mobility affects multi-cultural skills and educational quality Lydia Mechtenberg* Roland Strausz** * Technische Universität Berlin, Germany ** Freie Universität Berlin, Germany This research...

I evaluate German regulation that requires retail discounters to guarantee the availability of their products in bargain sales. The regulation is meant to prevent loss leaders. Retailers however claim that rationing is due to demand uncertainty and thereby undermine the regulation's rationale....

For mechanism design with independent values, we identify a subclass of Vickrey--Clarke--Groves (VCG) mechanisms that induce efficient ex ante investments even with externalities. The Vickrey second price auction does not belong to this class.