Transparent decision-making processes are widely regarded as a prerequisite for the working of a representative democracy. It facilitates accountability, and citizens may suspect that decisions, if taken behind closed doors, do not promote their interests. Why else the secrecy? We provide a...

In this paper, I study the wage a firm sets to attract high abilityworkers (hipo's) in situationsof unemployment. I show that the higher unemployment, the larger afirm's incentives to sorthigh and low ability workers. Moreover, workers will signal their(high) ability in situationsof (high)...

We investigate the nature of the adverse selection problem in a market for adurable goodwhere trading and entry of new buyers and sellers takes place in continuoustime. In thecontinuous time model equilibria with properties that are qualitativelydifferent from thestatic equilibria, emerge....

Firms signal high quality through high prices even if the market structure is highly competitive and price competition is severe. In a symmetric Bertrand oligopoly where products may differ only in their quality, production cost is increasing in quality and the quality of each firm’s product...

This paper investigates the extent of the holdup underinvestment problem in a buyer-seller relationship in which the seller has private information about his alternative trading opportunities. Theory predicts that, compared with a situation in which outside options are publicly observed, the...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Economic Theory</I> (2002). Vol. 20, issue 3, pages 579-601.<P> We investigate the nature of market failure in a dynamic version of Akerlof (1970) where identical cohorts of a durable good enter the market over time. In the dynamic model, equilibria with...</p></i>

In this paper, I study the wage a firm sets to attract high ability workers (hipo's) in situations of unemployment. I show that the higher unemployment, the larger a firm's incentives to sort high and low ability workers. Moreover, workers will signal their (high) ability in situations of (high)...

Transparent decision-making processes are widely regarded as a prerequisite for the working of a representative democracy. It facilitates accountability, and citizens may suspect that decisions, if taken behind closed doors, do not promote their interests. Why else the secrecy? We provide a...

Some committees are made up of experts, persons interested in both the (subject) matter at hand and in coming across as able decision-makers. Such committees would like to conceal disagreement from the public. We present a theory that describes the reaction of experts to the requirement to...

We investigate the nature of the adverse selection problem in a market for a durable good where trading and entry of new buyers and sellers takes place in continuous time. In the continuous time model equilibria with properties that are qualitatively different from the static equilibria, emerge....