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作者：Clark, Robert; Houde, Jean-Francois
作者单位：Universite de Montreal; Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal; University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：We point out a fundamental difficulty of successfully colluding in retail markets with heterogeneous firms, and characterize the mechanism recent gasoline cartels in Canada used to sustain collusion. Heterogeneity in cost and network size necessitates arrangements whereby participants split the market unequally to favor stronger players. We characterize empirically the strategy and transfer mechanism using court documents containing summaries and extracts of conversations between participants....
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作者：Sautmann, Anja
作者单位：Brown University
摘要：This paper experimentally tests the predictions of a principal-agent model in which the agent has biased beliefs about his ability. Overconfident workers are found to earn lower wages than underconfident ones because they overestimate their expected payoff, and principals adjust their offers accordingly. Moreover, the profit-maximizing contract distorts effort by varying incentives according to self-confidence, although only the most successful principals use this strategy. These findings have...
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作者：De Loecker, Jan
作者单位：Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Learning by exporting refers to the mechanism whereby a firm's performance improves after entering export markets. This mechanism is often mentioned in policy documents, but many econometric studies have not found corroborating evidence. I show that the econometric methods rely on an assumption that productivity evolves exogenously. I show how to accommodate endogenous productivity processes, such as learning by exporting. I discuss the bias introduced by ignoring such a process, and show that...
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作者：Fleurbaey, Marc; Schokkaert, Erik
作者单位：Princeton University; Universite Catholique Louvain
摘要：Behavioral economics has shaken the view that individuals have well-defined, consistent, and stable preferences. This raises a challenge for welfare economics, which takes as a key postulate that individual preferences should be respected. We argue, in agreement with Bernheim (2009) and Bernheim and Rangel (2009), that behavioral economics is compatible with consistency of partial preferences, and explore how the Bernheim-Rangel approach can be extended to deal with distributive issues. We rev...
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作者：Baccara, Mariagiovanna; Yariv, Leeat
作者单位：Washington University (WUSTL); California Institute of Technology
摘要：The focus of this paper is the endogenous formation of peer groups. In our model, agents choose peers before making contributions to public projects, and they differ in how much they value one project relative to another. Thus, the group's preference composition affects the type of contributions made. We characterize stable groups and find that they must be sufficiently homogeneous. We also provide conditions for some heterogeneity to persist as the group size grows large. In an application in...
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作者：Bedre-Defolie, Oezlem; Calvano, Emilio
作者单位：European School of Management & Technology; Bocconi University; Bocconi University
摘要：Payment card networks, such as Visa, require merchants' banks to pay substantial interchange fees to cardholders' banks on a per transaction basis. This paper shows that a network's profit-maximizing fee induces an inefficient price structure, oversubsidizing card usage and overtaxing merchants. We show that this distortion is systematic and arises from the fact that consumers make two distinct decisions (membership and usage), whereas merchants make only one (membership). In general, we contr...
