Consider a revenue-maximizing seller who can sell an object to one of n potential buyers. Each buyer either has hard information about his valuation (i.e., evidence that cannot be forged) or is ignorant. The optimal mechanism is characterized. It turns out that more ignorance can increase the...

This is a preliminary draft of an Invited Symposium paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society to be held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and 'standard' economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can...

This Paper uses a unique representative firm level data set to analyse the effect of domestic and international competitive pressure and ownership changes in three emerging economies, Bulgaria Poland and Romania. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: Domestic competitive pressure,...

For many goods (such as experience goods or addictive goods), consumers' preferences may change over time. In this paper, we examine a monopolist's optimal pricing schedule when current consumption can affect a consumer's valuation in the future and valuations are unobservable. We assume that...

We investigate the robustness of the new foreclosure doctrine and its associated welfare implications to the introduction of incomplete information. In particular, we let the upstream firm’s marginal cost be private information, unknown to the downstream firms. The previous literature has...

We develop a product market theory that explains why firms invest in general training of their workers. We consider a model where firms first decide whether to invest in general human capital, then make wage offers for each other’s trained employees and finally engage in imperfect product...

One way to understand the value of sporting ‘superstars’ is to examine the effect they have on match attendances and revenue. Arguably, the most famous sports star in Australia was Sir Donald Bradman, whose batting average has far exceeded that of any cricket players. This paper examines the...

We extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising. We model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product, and determine a firm's equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information, price information, and...

We develop a theory of exclusive dealing that rehabilitates pre-Chicago-school analyses. Our theory rests on two realistic assumptions: that firms are imperfectly informed about demand, and that a dominant firm has a competitive advantage over its rivals. Under those assumptions, exclusive...

We document the existence of pricing styles in the concert industry. Artists differ in the extent to which they rely on second- and third-degree price discrimination and in how likely they are to sell out concerts. Most strikingly, artists who use multiple seating categories are more likely to...