Consumer protection may induce some socially undesirable outcomes in a competitive bidding environment. In an auction with costly participation, we show that the possibility of default may cause social welfare loss through two channels. One is the possibility of no trade when a default occurs,...

A seller wants to allocate an indivisible product among a number of potential bidders by a finite deadline, and to contact a bidder, she needs to incur a search cost. We show that the seller's optimal search outcomes can be implemented by a sequential search auction, which is characterized by...

In a framework of sequential search, we define a decision maker’s time preference, which is endogenous to her optimal decisions and the environment. The induced time preference is non-stationary and context-dependent, which supports key empirical and experimental evidence, such as...

We introduce a noncooperative multilateral bargaining model for a network-restricted environment, in which players can communicate only with their neighbors. Each player strategically chooses the bargaining partners among the neighbors to buy out their communication links with upfront transfers....

Knowledge sharing has multifaceted effects on organizations, such as improving work performance, among which creativity is apparently one of the most important parts. Nevertheless, the effects of knowledge sharing on individuals has not been paid attention sufficiently by previous research....

We study the effects of corruption on equilibrium competition and social welfare in a first-price public procurement auction. In our model, firms are invited into the auction at positive costs, and a bureaucrat runs the auction on behalf of a government, who may request a bribe from the winning...

What determines the dynamic patterns of local public investment in authoritarian countries? We analyze a unique dataset that matches public-private partnership (PPP) projects with Chinese mayors who served from 2010 to 2017, and document a robust tenure effect in public investment. Mayors...

This paper explores how a seller should transmit product information to bidders with horizontally differentiated preferences. Under cheap-talk, we show that, in an informative equilibrium, the seller provides less precise information for more popular product attributes. Second, for any given...

We study information disclosure in standard auctions where bidders preferences are horizontally differentiated, whose valuations depend on the matching between the product attribute and their preferences. The seller may reveal product information in the form of partition prior to the auction....