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作者：Clark, Robert; Coviello, Decio; De Leverano, Adriano
作者单位：Queens University - Canada; Universite de Montreal; HEC Montreal
摘要：Clustered bids and a missing mass of nearly tied bids have both been proposed as markers of collusion. We present causal empirical evidence from an actual procurement cartel that bidding involves both clustering and a gap around the winning bid. We support these results with information from the testimony of cartel participants that explains how both patterns arise naturally as part of an arrangement featuring complementary bidding. Based on these findings, we develop an easy-to-implement scre...
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作者：Levy, Yehuda John; Veiga, Andre
作者单位：University of Glasgow; Imperial College London
摘要：We model competitive insurance markets with continuous cost-types. A regulator sets minimum and maximum coverage levels and a fee for nonbuyers. Equilibrium is unique if the type distribution is log-concave. Increasing the nonpurchase fee increases welfare if the density of types is decreasing. The optimal level of the minimum coverage is positive, is below full insurance, and induces some pooling at the minimum coverage contract. The optimal level of the maximum coverage is full insurance, ev...
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作者：Grochulski, Borys; Wong, Russell; Zhang, Yuzhe
作者单位：Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Richmond; Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station
摘要：We study the incentive role of severance compensation. In a canonical principal-agent model, we introduce exogenous job destruction risk and show that compensation following job destruction can reduce overall incentive costs. To mitigate the risk of inefficient endogenous termination, agents with low continuation value receive no severance and lose value at job destruction, while agents with high continuation value receive high severance and gain value at job destruction. Comparative statics o...
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作者：Vong, Allen
作者单位：National University of Singapore
摘要：A firm trades with a sequence of consumers who are unsure about the firm's competence and its effort to supply quality. I examine rating systems that sustain efficient outcomes in virtually all trades by providing consumers with information to motivate a patient-competent firm's effort. I characterize necessary and sufficient conditions for these systems to exist. I show that any such system censors the firm's track records, and explicitly construct one such system. This system reveals that th...
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作者：Biglaiser, Gary; Gu, Jiadong; Li, Fei
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; University of North Carolina School of Medicine; Zhejiang University
摘要：We consider the equilibrium interplay between sellers' price competition and consumers' perception of product differentiation. We analyze a situation where, before trading, consumers acquire information at a cost about their preferences between sellers' differentiated products. The incentive for information acquisition depends on the average value of products, the objective product differentiation, and their beliefs about sellers' prices. The acquired information shapes consumers' perceived pr...
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作者：Ganglmair, Bernhard; Simcoe, Timothy; Tarantino, Emanuele
作者单位：University of Mannheim; Leibniz Association; Zentrum fur Europaische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW); Boston University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Luiss Guido Carli University
摘要：Using data from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a voluntary organization that develops protocols for managing internet infrastructure, we estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of the decision to continue or abandon a line of research. The model's key parameters measure the speed at which authors learn whether their project will become a technology standard. We use the model to simulate two innovation policies: an R&D subsidy and a publication prize. While subsidies have a larger...
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作者：Chaves, Daniel; Duarte, Marco
作者单位：Western University (University of Western Ontario)
摘要：We study the inner workings of a hub-and-spoke cartel in the Brazilian automotive fuel industry. Based on court documents and detailed price and sales data, we discuss how gas station owners (spokes) operating inside the federal capital received help from fuel distributors (hub) to reduce dispersion of and increase gasoline's retail price. We provide evidence that distributor cartel members benefited by raising wholesale prices while keeping competitors from supplying retail cartel members. We...
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作者：Miettinen, Topi; Vanberg, Christoph
作者单位：Hanken School of Economics; Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg
摘要：We theoretically investigate how the application of unanimity rule can lead to inefficient delay in collective decision-making. We do so in the context of a distributive multilateral bargaining model featuring strategic precommitment. Prior to each bargaining round, players can declare a minimum share that they must receive in return for their vote. Such declarations become binding with an exogenously given probability. We characterize the set of stationary subgame perfect equilibria (SSPE) un...
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作者：Caradonna, Peter; Miller, Nathan h.; Sheu, Gloria
作者单位：California Institute of Technology; Georgetown University; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve System Board of Governors
摘要：We model merger-induced entry in the context of differentiated-products price competition. We fully characterize the combinations of merger efficiencies and entrant qualities that can mitigate the adverse equilibrium welfare effects of an otherwise anticompetitive merger. The possibility of merger-induced entry introduces nonmonotonicity into the equilibrium value that consumers receive from merger efficiencies, potentially necessitating the joint analysis of efficiencies and entry in merger r...
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作者：Chatterjee, Kalyan; Dong, Miaomiao; Hoshino, Tetsuya
作者单位：Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park; Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico
摘要：We consider an ultimatum game where the value of the object being sold to the buyer is high or low. The seller knows the value, but the buyer does not. The value to the seller is zero. We introduce the option for the buyer to acquire costly information after an offer is made. This information either confirms the high value or provides no information. As the cost of information vanishes, the buyer gets all the surplus in a refinement of perfect Bayesian equilibrium, although the option to acqui...
