The increasing number of antitrust cases that affect more than one country calls for more active cooperation between competition authorities. I analyse the impact of exchange of confidential information between two authorities deciding on a multinational merger. The authorities want to clear the...

Trade credit plays a very important role in inter-firm transactions. Because formal contracts are often unavailable, it is granted within an ongoing relationship. We characterize the optimal self-enforcing contract, when the ability to repay is unknown to the supplier and the threat of trade...

Reputation concerns can discipline agents to take costly effort and generate good outcomes. But what if outcomes are not always observed? We consider a model of reputation with shifting observability, and ask how this affects agents' incentives. We identify a novel and intuitive mechanism by...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive banking sector that shares information, and from an alternative hidden lender. The presence of the hidden lender restricts the contracts that can be obtained from the banking sector. In equilibrium some borrowers obtain...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive banking sector that shares information about borrowers, and an alternative hidden lender. We highlight that the presence of the hidden lender restricts the contracts that can be obtained from the banking sector and that...

This paper uses a vertical relational contract between two firms to explore the implications of trade credit when the ability to repay is not observed by the supplier.  Trade credit limits the supplier's possibilities to punish the cashless downstream firms and termination may be used in...

This paper develops a framework for the analysis of how asymmetric information impacts on adverse selection and market efficiency.  We adopt Akerlof's (1970) unit-demand model extended to a setting with multidimensional public and private information.  Adverse selection and efficiency are...

An increasingly important organisational design problem for many firms is to recoup general human capital rents while maintaining attractive career prospects for workers. We explore the role of information management in this context. In our model, an information management policy determines the...

We consider the impact of recruitment and training policies for the incentives of agents with career concerns. Training can be targeted, that is it has (or is chosen to have) more of an impact on particular types of agents and recruitment techniques can focus on finding superstars or weeding out...

Agents work for their own reputations when young but for their firms when old. An individual with an established reputation cannot credibly commit to exerting effort when working alone. However, by hiring and working with juniors of uncertain reputation, seniors will have incentives to exert...