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作者：Hummel, Patrick; Morgan, John; Stocken, Phillip C.
作者单位：Alphabet Inc.; Google Incorporated; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Dartmouth College
摘要：A firm surveys a large number of consumers, some of whom sincerely report their tastes and others of whom report strategically. It makes product decisions using the sample mean of survey responses. When firms and consumers agree on the fraction of sincere consumers, information loss is severe, and many products are flops as they poorly match consumer tastes. When beliefs differ, however, equilibrium is in linear strategies, and information aggregates. Despite this, flops still arise. A firm, h...
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作者：Hoerner, Johannes; Samuelson, Larry
作者单位：Yale University
摘要：We examine a repeated interaction between an agent who undertakes experiments and a principal who provides the requisite funding. A dynamic agency cost arises-the more lucrative the agent's stream of rents following a failure, the more costly are current incentives, giving the principal a motivation to reduce the project's continuation value. We characterize the set of recursive Markov equilibria. Efficient equilibria front-load the agent's effort, inducing maximum experimentation over an init...
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作者：Yang, Huanxing
作者单位：University System of Ohio; Ohio State University
摘要：We develop a search model to explain the long tail effect. Search targetability, or the quality of search, is explicitly modelled. Consumers are searching for the right products within the right categories. As search costs decrease, or search targetability increases, additional variety of goods catering to long tail consumers will be provided, and the concentration of sales across different categories of goods decreases. The effects of a decrease in search costs or an increase in search target...
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作者：Hong, Han; Paarsch, Harry J.; Xu, Pai
作者单位：Stanford University; University of Melbourne; University of Hong Kong
摘要：Using a clock model of a multi-unit, oral, ascending-price auction, within the common-value paradigm, we analyze the behavior of the transaction price as the numbers of bidders and units gets large in a particular way. We find that even though the transaction price is determined by a fraction of losing drop-out bids, that price converges in probability to the true, but ex ante unknown, value. Subsequently, we demonstrate that the asymptotic distribution of the transaction price is Gaussian. Fi...
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作者：Khalil, Fahad; Kim, Doyoung; Lawarree, Jacques
作者单位：University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; Sogang University
摘要：We examine the power of incentives in bureaucracies by studying contracts offered by a bureaucrat to her agent. The bureaucrat operates under a fixed budget, optimally chosen by a funding authority, and she can engage in policy drift, which we define as inversely related to her intrinsic motivation. Interaction between a fixed budget and policy drift results in low-powered incentives. We discuss how the bureaucrat may benefit from stricter accountability as it leads to larger budgets. Low-powe...
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作者：Roberts, James W.
作者单位：Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：This article shows how reserve prices can be used to control for unobserved object heterogeneity to identify and estimate the distribution of bidder values in auctions. Reserve prices are assumed to be monotonic in the realization of unobserved heterogeneity, but not necessarily set optimally. The model is estimated using transaction prices from a used car auction platform to show that the platform enables sellers to capture a large fraction of the potential value from selling their vehicle. I...
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作者：Lampe, Ryan; Moser, Petra
作者单位：Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Patent pools, which combine complementary patents of competing firms, are expected to increase overall welfare but potentially discourage innovation in substitutes for the pool technology. This article exploits a new historical data set on changes in patenting and firm entry for a clearly defined pool technology and substitutes in the 19th-century sewing machine industry. This analysis reveals a substantial increase in innovation for an-albeit technologically inferior-substitute technology. Hi...
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作者：Farhi, Emmanuel; Lerner, Josh; Tirole, Jean
作者单位：Harvard University; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics
摘要：Product quality certifiers may not reveal the identity of unsuccessful applicants/sellers for three reasons. First, they respond to the desire of individual sellers to avoid the stigma from rejection. Second, nontransparency helps a certifier to increase his market power by raising the stigma from lower-tier certification. Third, transparency does not help screen among heterogeneous sellers. Strategic complementarities arise as sellers move down the certification pecking order and lead to the ...
