Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) can be found in education, healthcare, and other not-for-profit sectors as well as in the accounting, financial, and legal professions. DeMarzo et al. (2005) show theoretically that SROs can create monopoly market power for their affiliated agents, but that...

Theory and empirics suggest that by curbing competition, incumbent electricity companies which used to be and here are referred to as Vertically Integrated Utilities (VIUs), can increase their profitability through combined ownership of generation and transmission and/or distribution networks....

Theories of fairness have typically used the assumption of ex-ante known pie size. Pie size, however, is rarely known ex ante. Using three simple allocation problems generally known as dictator, ultimatum and trust games, we explore the influence of ex-ante unknown pie size of varying degrees of...

We try to better understand the comparative advantages of structural and behavioral remedies of deregulation in electricity markets, an eminent policy issue for which the experimental evidence is scant and problematic. Specifically, we investigate theoretically and experimentally the effects on...

Cap-and-trade programs, such as the EU carbon Emission Trading Scheme, are currently the most prominent market-based method used to reduce carbon emissions. Cap-and-trade programs are, on theoretical grounds, considered to be a cost-efficient method. Experimental evidence, however, shows that...

In the EU electricity industry, many Vertically Integrated Utilities (VIUs) have ownership both of electricity generators and of transmission, hence VIU-owned or allied generators often are bidders in auctions for VIU-owned transmission. In Van Koten (2006) I show that welfare suffers and the...

When a bidder (referred to as the privileged bidder) is residual claimant to a part of the revenue from an auction with two bidders whose valuations are independently and identically distributed, bidding incentives are changed. Specifically, the privileged bidder will bid more aggressively to...

Plott, Wit & Yang (2003) conduct a betting market experiment and nd: First, information was aggregated. This suggests that traders updated their private information based on observed market odds. Second, a model based only on the use of private information seems to fit their data best. The...

We propose a computational model to study (the evolution of) post-secondary education. “Consumers” who differ in quality shop around for desirable colleges or universities. “Firms” that differ in quality signal the availability of their services to desirable students. As long as they...

Gneezy, List and Wu [Q. J. Econ. 121 (2006) 1283-1309] document that lotteries are often valued less than the lotteries’ worst outcomes. We show how to undo this result.