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作者：Li, Wenhao
作者单位：University of Hong Kong
摘要：This article studies a dynamic project-selection game between a Principal and an Agent with conflicting interests. Only the Agent knows what projects are feasible. In each period before a project is selected, the Principal imposes a restriction set. The Agent can select any feasible project within this set, thereby ending the game. The Agent can also stay silent, in which case the game will proceed to the next period. Importantly, the Principal cannot commit to her future restriction sets. I s...
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作者：Lyu, Qianjun
作者单位：Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
摘要：This article studies the optimal refund mechanism when an uninformed buyer learns about their valuation over time. We consider various refund mechanisms including simple return policies (no returns or free returns), and stochastic return policies, which allow the buyer to keep the product with some probability upon receiving a refund. We show that the optimal refund mechanism is deterministic and takes a simple form: either the seller deters buyer learning by offering a low price without retur...
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作者：Denicolo, Vincenzo; Polo, Michele
作者单位：University of Bologna; Bocconi University; Bocconi University
摘要：We analyze a dynamic model of repeated innovation where inventors may either be acquired by an incumbent or else resist takeover and challenge for leadership. In the short run, acquisitions always spur innovation because of the invention-for-buyout effect. In the longer run, however, they may stifle it because of a countervailing effect, the entrenchment of monopoly. The latter occurs when the incumbent's dominance depends on past levels of activity and is therefore reinforced by recurrent acq...
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作者：Motta, Massimo; Penta, Antonio
作者单位：ICREA; Pompeu Fabra University; Communaute d'universites et etablissements de Toulouse (Comue); Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics
摘要：We study the market effects of sponsored search auctions for advertising space on searches for brands. In our model, firms simultaneously choose the price of their product and the bids for the advertising auctions triggered by their own and rivals' brand keywords search. In any symmetric equilibrium, each firm wins its own keyword auction, and relative to a no-ads benchmark, online advertising raises the winning brand's marginal cost and ultimately market prices. Only in an environment with st...
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作者：Ryan, Conor
作者单位：Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
摘要：In the presence of adverse selection, mergers can increase welfare through a reduction in inefficient sorting. I characterize the sorting externality internalized between merging firms in a tractable discrete choice model. Mergers benefit consumers when the firms are small, willingness to pay is moderately increasing in cost, and consumer costs are skewed. Applying the model to the non-group health insurance market, 13% of potential mergers would improve consumer surplus. In markets where the ...
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作者：Gil, Ricard; Houde, Jean-Francois; Sun, Shilong; Takahashi, Yuya
作者单位：University of Navarra; IESE Business School; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle
摘要：This article studies entry preemption in new industries. We first test a key prediction of dynamic entry games: Entry preemption is most relevant in intermediate-sized markets, where firms face highest uncertainty about future entry. Using US drive-in theater market (1945-1957) data, we find robust evidence for this non-monotonic relationship between market size and early entry probability. We then estimate a dynamic entry game, and quantify preemption effects through counterfactual analysis. ...
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作者：Cao, Yiran; Chen, Yongmin; Ding, Yucheng; Zhang, Tianle
作者单位：Jinan University; University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; Wuhan University; Lingnan University
摘要：We analyze a model where consumers sequentially search experts for treatment recommendations and prices, facing either zero or a positive search cost, whereas experts simultaneously compete in these two dimensions. In equilibrium, experts may cheat by overstating the severity of a consumer's problem and recommending an unnecessary treatment, prices follow distributions depending on the problem type and the treatment, and consumers employ Bayesian belief updating about their problem types durin...
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作者：Houde, Sebastien
作者单位：University of Lausanne
摘要：A coarse certification provides simple but incomplete information. Its rationale is to help consumers trade off dimensions of quality that are complex and lack salience. In imperfectly competitive markets, it may induce excess bunching at the certification requirement, crowd out quality, and facilitate price discrimination. Who will ultimately benefit from a coarse certification thus depends on the degree of market power firms can exercise as well as on consumers' sophistication in responding ...
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作者：Liu, Dongri; Lu, Jingfeng
作者单位：Shandong University; National University of Singapore
摘要：We adopt a dynamic mechanism design approach to study how a revenue-maximizing seller should sell an indivisible object when a buyer with a private value can search for an outside option with continuous-intensity choices. We find that lowering the buyer's search cost definitely reduces the seller's revenue when the buyer's search decision is binary, as in Armstrong and Zhou (2016). In contrast, with continuous search intensity, a counterintuitive effect may arise: lowering the buyer's search c...
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作者：Condorelli, Daniele; Szentes, Balazs
作者单位：University of Warwick
摘要：A platform matches a unit mass of sellers, each owning a single product of heterogeneous quality, to a unit mass of buyers with differing valuations for unit-quality. After matching, sellers make take-it-or-leave-it price-offers to buyers. Initially, valuations of buyers are only known to them and the platform, but sellers make inferences from the matching algorithm. The efficient matching is positive assortative, but buyer-optimal matchings are stochastically negative assortative when there a...
