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作者:Merlino, Luca P.; Pin, Paolo; Tabasso, Nicole
作者单位:Universite Libre de Bruxelles; University of Antwerp; University of Siena; Bocconi University; University of Surrey
摘要:We study the diffusion of a true and a false message (the rumor) in a social network. Upon hearing a message, individuals may believe it, disbelieve it, or debunk it through costly verification. Whenever the truth survives in steady state, so does the rumor. Communication intensity in itself is irrelevant for relative rumor prevalence, and the effect of homophily depends on the exact verification process and equilibrium verification rates. Our model highlights that successful policies in the f...
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作者:Hodgson, Charles
作者单位:Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:Manufacturers of durable goods can encourage consumers facing transaction costs to upgrade by accepting used units as trade-ins. These buyback schemes increase demand for new units, but increase the supply of used units if trade-ins are resold. I investigate the equilibrium effects of buyback schemes in the market for business jets. I find that buyback increases manufacturer revenue by 7.2 percent at fixed prices. However, in equilibrium this revenue gain is diminished by 43 percent due to sub...
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作者:Al-Najjar, Nabil I.; Gary-Bobo, Robert J.
作者单位:Northwestern University; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; ENSAE Paris
摘要:A group of experts with different prior beliefs must choose a treatment. A dataset is made public and leads to revisions of beliefs. We propose a model where the experts' disagreements are resolved through bargaining, using the Nash bargaining solution. Experts bargain after disclosure of the dataset. Bargaining may lead to an inefficient use of information in a strong sense: experts receive a lower payoff in every state and for any prior belief (i.e., inadmissibility). Bargaining exhibits und...
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作者:Kirkegaard, Rene
作者单位:University of Guelph
摘要:This paper studies optimal contest design in contests with noisy per-formance. Here, contest design is a team moral hazard problem that endogenizes the assignment rule that maps performance profiles into winning probabilities. The optimal design features endogenous stan-dards for eligibility, and the number of prizes that are awarded may be stochastic. Generally, one group of agents is identified as first claim-ants of prizes, contingent on performance exceeding a threshold of excellence. Howe...
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作者:Siegel, Ron; Strulovici, Bruno
作者单位:Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; Northwestern University
摘要:This paper proposes a mechanism-design approach to study criminal justice systems. We derive properties of optimal mechanisms for two notions of welfare distinguished by their treatment of deterrence. These properties provide insights into the effects of defendants' private information about their guilt; highlight forces that may underlie certain features of existing systems, such as plea bargaining and binary verdicts and the separation of fact-finding and sentencing; and indicate directions ...
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作者:Lorecchio, Caio; Monte, Daniel
作者单位:University of Barcelona; Getulio Vargas Foundation; University of Turin
摘要:An information designer wishes to persuade agents to invest in a project of unknown quality. To do so, she must induce investment and collect feedback from these investments. Motivated by data reg-ulations and simplicity concerns, our designer faces communica-tion constraints. These constraints hinder her without benefiting the agents: they impose an upper bound on the induced belief spread, limiting persuasion. Nevertheless, two-rating systems (direct recom-mendations) are the optimal design ...
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作者:Kubitz, Greg
作者单位:Queensland University of Technology (QUT)
摘要:In perfectly discriminating contests with private information , low-ability contestants prefer to appear strong, while high-ability contestants prefer to appear weak. In a two-stage contest , this leads to a unique symmetric equilibrium with partial pooling in the first stage. A higher output in the first contest leads to a weakly higher belief about the contestant's ability entering the second contest. We characterize this unique equilibrium when cost of effort is linear and show how the priz...
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作者:Hui, Xiang; Saeedi, Maryam; Spagnolo, Giancarlo; Tadelis, Steven
作者单位:Washington University (WUSTL); Carnegie Mellon University; University of Rome Tor Vergata; University of Rome Tor Vergata; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
摘要:Certification of sellers by trusted third parties helps alleviate infor-mation asymmetries in markets, yet little is known about the impact of a certification's threshold on market outcomes. Exploiting a pol-icy change on eBay, we study how a more selective certification threshold affects the distribution of quality and incumbent behav-ior. We develop a stylized model that shows how changes in selec-tivity change the distribution of quality and prices in markets. Using rich data from hundreds ...
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作者:Brown, Zach Y.; Mackay, Alexander
作者单位:University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; National Bureau of Economic Research; Harvard University
摘要:We document new facts about pricing technology using high-frequency data, and we examine the implications for competition. Some online retailers employ technology that allows for more fre-quent price changes and automated responses to price changes by rivals. Motivated by these facts, we consider a model in which firms can differ in pricing frequency and choose pricing algorithms that are a function of rivals'prices. In competitive (Markov perfect) equi-librium, the introduction of simple pric...
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作者:Liu, Q., I; Sun, Bo
作者单位:Peking University; University of Virginia
摘要:This paper theoretically examines how relative wealth concerns affect equilibrium contracting and systemic risk-taking. We find that such externalities can generate pay for luck as an equilibrium strategy. In expectation of pay for luck in other firms, tying mana-gerial pay to luck provides insurance to managers against a com-pensation shortfall relative to executive peers. We also show that an effort-inducing mechanism exists: managers have additional incen-tives to exert effort in utilizing ...