We consider a game of information transmission, with one informed decision maker gathering information from one or more informed senders. Private information is (conditionally) correlated across players, and communication is cheap talk. For the one sender case, we show that correlation...

We examine the competitive effects of the vertical integration of gasoline refineries and retailers in the U.S. Adapting the first-order condition approach of static oligopoly games to the analysis of vertically related oligopolies, we develop a novel framework for directly evaluating the...

This paper develops a semiotic-inferential model of verbal communication for incomplete information games: a language is seen as a set of conventional signs that point to types, and the credibility of a message depends on the strategic context. Formally, there is an encoding-decoding step where...

We compare auctioning and grandfathering as allocation mechanisms of emission permits when there is a secondary market with market power and the firms have private information. Based on real-life cases such as the EU ETS, we consider a multi-unit, multi-bid uniform auction, modelled as a...

It has been shown in prior research that cost effectiveness in the competitive emissions permit market could be affected by tacit collusion or price manipulation when the corresponding polluting product market is oligopolistic. We analyze these cross market links using a Stackelberg model to...

This paper studies the design of sin taxes when firms exercise market power. We outline an optimal tax framework that highlights how market power impacts the efficiency and redistributive properties of sin taxation, and quantify these effects in an application to sugar-sweetened beverage...

The Lerner index is widely used to assess firms' market power. However, estimation and interpretation present several challenges, especially for banks, which tend to produce multiple outputs and operate with considerable inefficiency. We estimate Lerner indices for U.S. banks for 2001-18 using...

We examine welfare e ffects of real-time pricing in electricity markets. Before stochastic energy demand is known, competitive retailers contract with final consumers who exogenously do not have real-time meters. After demand is realized, two electricity generators compete in a uniform price...

This paper explores how social interactions among consumers shape markets. In a two-country model, consumers meet and exchange information about the quality of the goods. As information spreads, the demands evolve, affecting the prices and quantities manufactured by profit-maximizing firms. We...

We study the bilateral exchange of information in the context of linear quadratic games. An information structure is here represented by a non directed network, whose nodes are agents and whose links represent sharing agreements. We first study the equilibrium use of information in any given...