We examine the bid-ask quotes offered by specialists (or dealers) who face indirect competition from other specialists who trade in related assets. In the context of a simple model where investors have mean variance preferences, we characterize the equilibrium bids and asks quoted by K...

We survey the literature analysing the price formation and trading process, and the consequences of market organization for price discovery and welfare. We develop a united perspective on theoretical, empirical and experimental approaches. We discuss the evidence on transaction costs and the...

We develop a model of price formation in a dealership market where monitoring of the information flow requires costly effort. The result is imperfect monitoring, which creates profit opportunities for speculators, who do not act as dealers but simply monitor the information flow and quote...

This paper considers price determination by monopolistic sellers who know the distribution of valuations among the potential buyers. We derive a novel condition under which the optimal price set by the monopolist is unique. In many settings, this condition is easy to interpret, and it is valid...

This Paper studies scoring auctions, a procedure commonly used to buy differentiated products: suppliers submit offers on all dimensions of the good (price, level of non monetary attributes), and these are evaluated using a scoring rule. We provide a systematic analysis of equilibrium behaviour...

This Paper deals with collective decision making within a group of independent jurisdictions. The right to choose the public policy is delegated from the central authority of one of the jurisdictions through a bidding procedure among the group members. We identify the following trade-off:...

There is a well-established high quality literature on the role of networks, particularly ethnic networks, in international trade. Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers (information costs, risk and uncertainty) to trade by building trust and substituting for the difficulty of...

This paper examines the impact of firms' conduct on market structure. It studies the evolution of concentration in UK manufacturing following the abolition of cartels using a theoretical framework based on Sutton's theory of market structure and a panel data set of four-digit industries over...