For the procurement of complex goods the early exchange of information is important to avoid costly renegotiation. If the buyer can specify the main characteristics of possible design improvements in a complete contingent contract, a scoring auction implements the efficient allocation. If this...

We consider a multi-dimensional procurement problem in which sellers have private information about their costs and about a possible design flaw. The information about the design flaw is necessarily correlated. We solve for the optimal Bayesian procurement mechanism that implements the efficient...

It is widely believed that an environmental tax (price regulation) and cap-and-trade (quantity regulation) are equally efficient in controlling pollution when there is no uncertainty. We show that this is not the case if some consumers (firms, local governments) are morally concerned about...

The procurement of complex projects is often plagued by large cost overruns. One important reason for these additional costs are flaws in the initial design. If the project is procured with a price-only auction, sellers who spotted some of the flaws have no incentive to reveal them early. Each...

Cost overrun is ubiquitous in public procurement. We argue that this can be the result of a constrained optimal award procedure: The procurer awards the contract via a price-only auction and cannot commit not to renegotiate. If cost differences are more pronounced for a fancy than a standard...

Pay What You Want (PWYW) and Name Your Own Price (NYOP) are customer driven pricing mechanisms that give customers (some) pricing power. Both have been used in service industries with high fixed costs to price discriminate without setting a reference price. Their participatory and innovative...

We analyze "Pay What You Want" as a business model for Open Access publishing by discussing motives leading authors to make voluntary contributions, potential benefits for publishers and present results from a field experiment at one publisher. Data from the field experiment indicate authors'...

Weitzman (2014) proposed that focusing international climate negotiations on a uniform carbon price is more effective than Paris style negotiations in achieving ambitious climate action. We put this hypothesis to an experimental test by simulating international negotiations on climate change in...

International cooperation on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, disarmament, or free trade needs to be negotiated. The success of such negotiations depends on how they are designed. In the context of international climate change policy, it has been proposed [e.g., Weitzman J of the...

In seiner Thünen-Vorlesung vor dem Verein für Socialpolitik im Herbst 2020 hat Klaus Schmidt das Design von Klimaschutzverhandlungen untersucht. Er geht dabei von einem Vorschlag Martin Weitzmans aus, künftige Verhandlungen auf einen einheitlichen CO2-Mindestpreis zu fokussieren. Wäre ein...