Showing 1 - 10 of 16
Despite widespread use in online transactions, rating systems only provide summary statistics of buyers' diverse opinions at best. To investigate the consequences of this coarse form of information aggregation, we consider a dynamic lemons market in which buyers share their evaluations...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10014233329
This paper examines the effectiveness of cheap talk when the receiver is imperfectly informed. We show that the receiver’s prior knowledge becomes an impediment to efficient communication in a model with the discrete state space: in general, the more the receiver is informed, the less...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003921775
Viscusi (1978) shows how, in markets with quality uncertainty, perfect certification results in separation from top down due to an unraveling process similar to Akerlof (1970). De and Nabar (1991) argue that imperfect certification prevents unraveling so that equilibria with full separation do...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003985597
The paper studies procurement contracts with pre-project investigations in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard. To model the procurer's roblem, we extend a standard sequential screening model to endogenous information acquisition with moral hazard. The optimal contract displays...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10003935679
This paper shows that, contrary to what is generally believed, decreasing concavity of the agent's utility function with respect to the screening variable is not sufficient to ensure that stochastic mechanisms are suboptimal. The paper demonstrates, however, that they are suboptimal whenever the...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010370532
This paper provides new analytical tools for studying principal-agent problems with adverse selection and limited commitment. By allowing the principal to use general communication devices we overcome the literature's common, but overly restrictive focus on one-shot, direct communication. In...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010361996
This paper studies the strategic effect of a difference in timing of verification in an agency model. A principal may choose between two equally efficient verification procedures: monitoring and auditing. Under auditing the principal receives additional information. Due to a double moral hazard...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010366544
This paper studies the effectiveness of interim information in reducing inefficiencies in long term relationships. If the interim information is verifiable, it resolves all problems of asymmetric information. Under nonverifiability, the information alleviates the contracting problem only...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010343964
In this paper we analyze a cheap talk model with a partially informed receiver. In clear contrast to the previous literature, we find that there is a case where the receiver's prior knowledge enhances the amount of information conveyed via cheap talk. The point of departure is our explicit focus...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009516783
Auctions are a popular and prevalent form of trading mechanism, despite the restriction that the seller cannot price-discriminate among potential buyers. To understand why this is the case, we consider an auction-like environment in which a seller with an indivisible object negotiates with two...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10009738392