We consider two mechanisms to procure differentiated goods: a request for quote and an English auction with bidding credits. In the request for quote, each seller submits a price and the inherent quality of his good. Then the buyer selects the seller who offers the greatest difference in quality...

Networks and Farsighted Stability By Frank H. Page, Jr. Department of Finance University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 USA fpage@cba.ua.edu Myrna H. Wooders Department of Economics University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL UK M.Wooders@warwick.ac.uk Samir Kamat Portfolio Management Group Wachovia...

Self regulation is a mechanism of quality vigilance that is frequently used in credence good industries. The providers in these markets generally form a Self Regulated Organization (SRO), composed by some members of the industry, whose main job is to convince consumers through an active...

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for observed outcomes in extensive game forms, in which preferences are unobserved, to be rationalized first, partially, as a Nash equilibrium and then, fully, as the unique subgame-perfect equilibrium. Thus, one could use these conditions to find...

Ascending price clock auctions with drop-out information typically yield outcomes closer to equilibrium predictions than do comparable sealed-bid auctions. However clock auctions require congregating all bidders for a fixed time interval, which has limited field applicability and introduces...

Two main results have been obtained on the literature on contractual solutions to the hold-up problem. First, a contract specifying a price and quantity of the final good to be traded will, fairly generally, induce efficient investments if these are `selfish' in nature, i.e., each party's...

In this paper we study hedonic games where each player views every other player either as a friend or as an enemy. Two simple priority criteria for comparison of coalitions are suggested, and the corresponding preference restrictions based on appreciation of friends and aversion to enemies are...

This paper extends the principal-agent model to determine the size of the firm as measured by the number of agent hired. Hiring more agents results in benefits and costs to the principal. The benefits are gains from specialization: higher productivity can be achieved if, as the number of agents...