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作者：Besanko, David; Tong, Jian; Wu, Jason Jianjun
作者单位：Northwestern University; University of Southampton
摘要：We study subsidy policies for research programs when firms have private information about the likelihood of project viability, but the government cannot form a unique prior about this likelihood. When the shadow cost of public funds is zero, first-best welfare can be attained as a (belief-free) ex post equilibrium under both monopoly and competition, but it cannot be attained when the shadow cost is positive. However, max-min subsidy policies exist under monopoly and competition and consist of...
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作者：Gross, Daniel P.
作者单位：Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Although tractors are now used in nearly every agricultural field operation and in the production of nearly all crops, they first developed with much more limited application. Early diffusion was accordingly rapid in these narrower applications but limited in scope until tractor technology generalized. The sequence of diffusion is consistent with a model of Research and Development (R&D) in specific- versus general-purpose attributes and with other historical examples, suggesting that the key ...
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作者：Jeon, Doh-Shin; Lefouili, Yassine
作者单位：Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics
摘要：We analyze the competitive effects of bilateral cross-licensing agreements in a setting with many competing firms. We show that firms can sustain the monopoly outcome if they can sign unconstrained bilateral cross-licensing contracts. This result is robust to increasing the number of firms who can enter into a cross-licensing agreement. We also investigate the scenario in which a cross-licensing contract cannot involve the payment of a royalty by a licensee who decides ex post not to use the l...
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作者：Liu, Bin; Lu, Jingfeng
作者单位：The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; National University of Singapore
摘要：This article studies cost-minimizing two-stage procurement with Research and Development (R&D). The principal wishes to procure a product from an agent. At the first stage, the agent can conduct R&D to discover a more cost-efficient production technology. First-stage R&D efficiency and effort and the realized second-stage production cost are the agent's private information. The optimal two-stage mechanism is implemented by a menu of single-stage contracts, each specifying a fixed provision pri...
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作者：Takahashi, Hidenori
作者单位：University of Mannheim
摘要：I investigate firms' competition over price and product design under uncertain design evaluations in the context of Design-Build (DB) auctions. Reviewers' design evaluations contain uncertainty from a bidder's perspective, leading luck to dampen differences in the firms' chances of winning. I model bidders' behavior and show semiparametric identification of the model primitives. Uncertain design evaluations increase the expected price of design quality and exacerbate an auctioneer's uncertaint...
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作者：Quan, Thomas W.; Williams, Kevin R.
作者单位：University System of Georgia; University of Georgia; Yale University
摘要：Online retail gives consumers access to an astonishing variety of products. However, the additional value created by this variety depends on the extent to which local retailers already satisfy local demand. To quantify the gains and account for local demand, we use detailed data from an online retailer and propose methodology to address a common issue in such data-sparsity of local sales due to sampling and a significant number of local zeros. Our estimates indicate products face substantial d...
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作者：Biglaiser, Gary; Li, Fei
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：We examine the role of a middleman as an expert in markets. A seller's effort determines the quality of the good. Buyers observe neither the seller's effort nor the good's quality. A middleman, after observing a signal about the good's quality, decides whether to purchase it and then to sell it. We show that the presence of a middleman may either reduce or exacerbate the seller's moral hazard problem. We also consider a model with multiple middlemen. We find that the seller's effort is minimiz...
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作者：Willems, Bert; Zwart, Gijsbert
作者单位：Tilburg University; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; University of Groningen
摘要：We model the regulation of irreversible capacity expansion by a firm with private information about capacity costs, where investments are financed from the firm's cash flows and demand is stochastic. The optimal mechanism is implemented by a revenue tax that increases with the price cap. If the asymmetric information has large support, then the optimal mechanism consists of a laissez-faire regime for low-cost firms. That is, the firm's price cap corresponds to that of an unregulated monopolist...
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作者：de Roos, Nicolas
作者单位：University of Sydney
摘要：We examine the effect of limited product comparability on the viability of collusion. Firms choose messages to influence consumer product comparison. The cartel hinders transparency on the equilibrium path and seeks it for optimal punishment. Five conditions are each sufficient to ensure obfuscation aids collusion: if firms can mix over messages or commit to messages, if messages are informative, or if an individual firm or the cartel can control comparability. We also analyze the impact of me...
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作者：Shiller, Benjamin; Waldfogel, Joel; Ryan, Johnny
作者单位：Brandeis University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Ad blocking software allows Internet users to obtain information without generating ad revenue for site owners, potentially undermining investments in content. We explore the impact of site-level ad blocker usage on website quality, as inferred from traffic. We find that each additional percentage point of site visitors blocking ads reduces its traffic by 0.67% over 35 months. Impacted sites provide less content over time, providing corroboration for the mechanism. Effects on revenue are compo...
