We use a model with agency frictions to analyze the structure of a dealer market that faces competition from a crossing network. Traders are privately informed about their types (e.g. their portfolios), which is something the dealer must take into account when engaging his counterparties....

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...

The conflict between Pareto optimality and incentive compatibility, that is, the fact that some Pareto optimal (efficient) allocations are not incentive compatible is a fundamental fact in information economics, mechanism design and general equilibrium with asymmetric information. This important...

We examine the design of nonlinear prices by a multiproduct monopolist who serves customers with multidimensional but correlated types. We show that the monopoly can exploit the correlations between consumers' types to design pricing mechanisms that fully extract the surplus from each consumer....

We study a dynamic model of monopolistic provision of commitment devices to sophisticated, Strotzian decision makers. We allow for unobservable heterogeneity at the contracting stage in the agents' preferences for commitment vs. flexibility. The first-best contracts under complete information...

This paper analyzes optimal product lines when consumers differ both in their taste for quality and in their desire for social image. The market outcome features partial pooling and product differentiation that is not driven by heterogeneous valuations for quality but by image concerns. A...

Internationally, there is no consensus concerning the legal and moral judgment of prostitution. Nevertheless, there is an overwhelming agreement on the need to fight sexual slavery. We analyze how a law - introduced to punish clients of commercial sex services - affects market outcomes. More...

In markets, in which exchange requires costly search for trading partners, intermediaries can help to reduce the trading frictions. This intuition is modelled in a framework with heterogeneous agents, who have the chocie between intermediated exchange and search accompanied by some bargaining...

This paper uses a unique data set of Latin American paintings auctioned by Sotheby's between 1995 and 2002 to investigate several puzzles from the recent auctions literature. Our results suggest that: (1) the reputation of an artist and the provenance of the artwork, omitted variables in most...

Once a new technology has been invented, there is a credible threat of imitationwhen patents are long and imitation cost is low. When imitation is credible, the innovator hasan incentive to postpone technology adoption for relatively high cost of imitation. Thepossibility of licensing eliminates...