Volume 19, Issue 1 -

This paper examines a different way of privatization from existing literature. In a mixed duopoly Hotelling type model in which the public firm consists of multiple subsidiaries, instead of privatizing the public firm as its entirety, the government may privatize only one of the subsidiaries (for example the manufacturing subsidiary). We find that this kind of privatization always improves social welfare comparing to no privatization at all. And comparing to privatizing the public firm in its entirety, privatizing only the manufacturing subsidiary always results in larger consumer welfare and results in larger social welfare when transport cost or R&D cost is sufficiently large.

We investigate combinatorial allocations with opt-out types and clarify the possibility of achieving efficiency under incomplete information. We introduce two distinct collective decision procedures. The first procedure assumes that the central planner designs a mechanism and players have the option to exit. The mechanism requires interim individual rationality. The second procedure assumes that players design a mechanism by committing themselves to participate. The mechanism requires marginal stability against blocking behavior by the largest proper coalitions. We show that the central planner can earn non-negative revenue in the first procedure, if and only if he cannot do so in the second.

We establish a relationship between decay centrality and two widely used measures of centrality, namely degree and closeness. We show that for low values of the decay parameter the nodes with maximum decay centrality also have maximum degree, whereas for high values of the decay parameter they also maximize closeness. For intermediate values, we provide sufficient conditions that allow the comparison of decay centrality of different nodes and we show via numerical simulations that in the vast majority of networks, the nodes with maximum decay centrality are characterized by a threshold on the decay parameter below which they belong to the set of nodes with maximum degree and above which they belong to the set of nodes with maximum closeness. We also propose a simple rule of thumb that ensures a nearly optimal choice with very high probability.

We study sequential sealed bid auctions with decreasing reserve prices when there are two identical objects for sale and unit-demand bidders (existing literature has dealt with the case of weakly increasing reserve prices). Under decreasing reserve prices bidders may have an incentive not to bid in the first auction, and no equilibrium exists with a strictly increasing stage one bidding function. However, we find that an equilibrium always exists, and its shape depends on the distance between the two reserve prices. The equilibrium exhibits some pooling at the stage one auction, which disappears in the limit as the number of bidders tends to infinity. We also show revenue equivalence between first-price and second-price sequential auctions under decreasing reserve prices. Finally, our results allow us to shed some light on an optimal order problem (increasing versus decreasing exogenous reserve prices) for selling the two objects.

In this paper, I introduce and study the γ $\gamma$-core of a general strategic game. I first show that the γ $\gamma$-core of an arbitrary strategic game is smaller than the conventional α $\alpha$- and β $\beta$- cores. I then consider the partition function form of a general strategic game and show that a prominent class of partition function games admit nonempty γ $\gamma$-cores. Finally, I show that each γ $\gamma$-core payoff vector (a cooperative solution) can be supported as an equilibrium outcome of an intuitive non-cooperative game and the grand coalition is the unique equilibrium outcome if and only if the γ $\gamma$-core is non-empty.

This paper studies targeted advertising in two-sided markets. Two platforms, with different targeting abilities, compete for single-homing consumers, while advertising firms are multi-homing. Ads overall impose negative externalities on consumers. When the targeting ability of the advantaged platform increases, (i) the advantaged platform will have more advertising firms, attract more consumers, and become more profitable, but its ad price and total volume of ads could either increase or decrease; (ii) the disadvantaged platform will have fewer advertising firms, attract fewer consumers, have fewer ads in total, increase its ad price, and become less profitable; (iii) all consumers will be better off. Finally, we compare social incentives and equilibrium incentives in investing in targeting ability, and find that underinvestment is most likely to occur.

Delegated bargaining over multiple issues of varying sizes is a frequent occurrence and happens during such contexts as real estate sales and political representation. Past work has shown that while simultaneously bargaining over two issues, it is in the best interest of an individual to choose a representative with identical preferences as herself. By allowing the sizes of the two issues to vary, this paper uses a two-issue, two-player Rubinstein bargaining game to show that an individual is best served by selecting a representative whose preferences closest resemble her bargaining rival’s preferences. It is also found that in some instances depending on the size of the issues the individual will be indifferent when choosing between a representative with identical preferences and another with different preferences to bargain on her behalf.

This paper studies the incentives of firms selling vertically differentiated products to merge. To this aim, we introduce a three-stage game in which, at the first stage, three independent firms can decide to merge with their competitors via a sequential game of coalition formation and, at the second and third stage, they can optimally revise their qualities and prices, respectively. We study whether such binding agreements (i.e. full or partial mergers) can be sustained as subgame perfect equilibria of the coalition formation game, and analyze their effects on equilibrium qualities, prices and profits. We find that, although profitable, the merger-to-monopoly of all firms is not an outcome of the finite-horizon negotiation, where only partial mergers arise. Moreover, we show that all stable mergers always include the firm initially producing the bottom quality good and reduce the number of variants on sale.

In litigation models, the parties’ probability to succeed in a lawsuit hinge upon the merits of the parties’ claims and their litigation efforts. In this paper we extend this framework to consider an important procedural aspect of the legal system: the standard of proof. We recast the conventional litigation model to consider how alternative standards of proof affect litigation choices. We analyze the interrelation between different standards of proof, the effectiveness of the parties’ efforts, and the merits of the case. We study how these factors jointly affect the parties’ litigation expenditures, the selection of cases brought to the courts, pretrial bargain solutions and preemptive strategies. Our results show that standards of proof are not only instrumental to balancing the competing goals of access to justice and judicial truth-finding, but they also play a critical role in affecting parties’ litigation investments and settlement choices, and in sorting the mix of cases that will actually be filed and defended in courts. The understanding of the sorting effect of standards of proof sheds light on their role as a policy instrument in civil litigation.

This paper provides a moral hazard characterization of the effects of lending relationship on cost of funds. I develop a model that studies the problem of financial contracting between a bank and an entrepreneur and isolates the effect of the lending relationship on the interest rates. The main result is that a bank-entrepreneur relationship has a positive effect on the interest rates, the optimal contract specifying a decreasing sequence of interest rates. The possibility of the entrepreneur to use partially his retained earnings improves the terms of the contract between entrepreneur and lender by reducing the difference between the two interest rates.

In uniform price auctions, multiple prices are sustainable in equilibrium as a result of the market power of bidders. I show that low price equilibria are removed in a framework with asymmetric bidders who cannot anticipate the seller’s rationing strategy. Attracting high cost bidders’ participation in the auction induces the low cost bidders to bid more aggressively in order to eliminate the high cost bidders. Ex-post optimal equilibria with non-increasing demand schedules only exist when the seller is allowed to use any degree of rationing.

I model the behavior of decision-makers seeking conformity and influence in a connected population. The model allows for one-sided linking, with information flowing from the target to the link’s originator. Conformity is achieved only with a social order, necessitating differentiated rewards despite ex ante homogeneity. The leader holds a strategic social location ex post , exerting influence independent of any leadership traits. A strong desire to influence produces non-conforming autonomous decision-makers. Socially detrimental multiple leaders can be sustained as well.

This paper examines how a firm can strategically use sellouts to influence consumers’ beliefs about its product’s popularity. A monopolist faces a market of conformist consumers, whose willingness to pay is increasing in their beliefs about aggregate demand. Consumers are broadly rational but have limited strategic reasoning about the firm’s incentives. Formally, I apply the concept of a ‘cursed equilibrium’, where consumers neglect how the firm’s chosen actions might be correlated with its private information about demand. I show that in a dynamic setting, the firm may choose its price and capacity so as to generate sellouts, specifically to exploit consumers’ limited reasoning. It does so to effectively conceal unfavorable information from consumers about past demand in a way that increases future profits. Sellouts tend to occur when demand is low, rather than high, and may be accompanied by introductory pricing. The analysis also demonstrates that the firm’s ability to mislead some consumers always benefits certain others, and can result in higher overall consumer surplus.

This article investigates the strategic environmental corporate social responsibility (ECSR) of polluting firms in the presence of eco-firms. When the firms decide to adopt ECSR sequentially within the framework of the managerial incentive design and then face simultaneous price competition, we show that firms will adopt ECSR and purchase abatement goods to mitigate competition if the products are more substitutable, but the late adopter chooses lower ECSR and thus earns higher profit. It can partially explain the current expansive adoption of ECSR as an industry-wide wave.

This paper explores the impact of intensity of rivalry in downstream market on the equilibrium locations of the downstream firms under a vertical market structure á la Hotelling. We find that: (i) the presence of upstream firms softens the spatial competition in downstream market; (ii) minimum differentiation cannot be achieved as the equilibrium outcome and the equilibrium product differentiation is insufficient relative to socially optimum; (iii) social welfare is higher with a higher weight attached to intensity of rivalry, which is different from the non-monotonic relationship under the horizontal market case; (iv) the equilibrium product differentiation is independent of bargaining power under the two-part tariff contracts, which is different from Brekke and Straume (2004) under linear pricing.

We study the problem of allocating projects to heterogeneous workers. The simultaneous execution of multiple projects imposes constraints across project teams. Each worker has preferences over the combinations of projects in which he can potentially participate and his team members in any of these projects. We propose a revelation mechanism that is Pareto-efficient and group strategy-proof (Theorem 1). We also identify two preference domains on which the mechanism is strongly group strategy-proof (Theorem 2). Our results subsume results by Monte and Tumennasan (2013) and Kamiyama (2013) .

We study games with two possibilities for the strategic variable and find that contrary to the Nash equilibrium the evolutionarily stable equilibrium – provided it uniquely exists – does not depend on which possibility is chosen. Our result generalizes recent findings of Satoh, Tanaka and Wagener who studied this issue in various special cases.

Farrell and Shapiro’s upward pricing pressure (‘UPP’) is widely used in merger analysis due to its intuitiveness, despite not accounting for the interdependence between the merging firms’ pricing incentives (‘feedback effects’). However, ignoring feedback effects can have an impact on the way competition authorities rank mergers. The main result of this article is that UPP with feedback effects is equivalent to Werden’s critical efficiencies. Importantly, this link allows for the derivation of an expression that combines the intuition of UPP as the ‘value of diverted sales’ with the accuracy of critical efficiencies. Throughout, the focus is on the static unilateral effects of horizontal mergers with differentiated Bertrand competition.

This paper investigates whether small perturbations to a game with continuous strategy spaces and unique Nash equilibrium also yields a game with unique equilibrium. The answer is affirmative for games with smooth payoffs, differentiable strict concavity in own actions, and transversal intersection of best response curves. Though intuitive for games with unique interior equilibrium, this result holds even for equilibria at the boundaries of strategy sets.

We study forecast dispersion in a finite-player forecasting game modeled as an aggregate game with payoff externalities and dispersed information. In the game, each agent cares about being accurate as well as about the distance of his forecast from the average forecast; and with a finite number of agents, the agents can strategically influence that average. We show that the finiteness of the number of agents weakens the strategic effect induced by the underlying preference. We find that when each agent prefers to be close to the average forecast, the presence of strategic manipulation of the average forecast contributes to a higher forecast dispersion; when instead each agent wants to be distinctive from the average, the opposite is true.