This paper studies the role of exchange policies as a price discrimination device in a sequential screening model with heterogeneous goods. In the first period, agents are uncertain about their ordinal preferences over a set of horizontally differentiated goods, but have private information...

This work takes a closer look on the predominant assumption in usual lemon market models of having finitely many or even only two different levels of quality. We model a situation which is close to the classical monopolistic setting but admits an interval of possible quality values....

We present a diagrammatic and step-by-step analysis of price signaling quality. Because quality is a continuum on the real positive line, out-of-equilibrium beliefs need not be specified, i.e., every positive price is a positive outcome in equilibrium. We first study the behavior of the monopoly...

We study the informational role of prices in a stochastic environment. We provide a closed-form solution of the monopoly problem when the price imperfectly signals quality to the uninformed buyers. We then study the effect of noise on output, market price, information flows, and expected...

We study the informational role of prices in a stochastic environment. We provide a closed-form solution of the monopoly problem when the price imperfectly signals quality to the uninformed buyers. We then study the effect of noise on output, market price, information flows, and expected...

An auctioneer faces a pool of potential bidders that changes over time. She can delay the auction at a cost, in the hopes of having a thicker market later on. We identify a property of the distribution of bidder values—its “price elasticity”—that governs the distortions caused by revenue...

We incorporate a search-theoretic model of imperfect competition into a standard model of asymmetric information with unrestricted contracts. We characterize the unique equilibrium, and use our characterization to explore the interaction between adverse selection, screening, and imperfect...

We provide a technique for constructing optimal multiattribute screening contracts in a general setting with one-dimensional types based on necessary optimality conditions. Our approach allows for type-dependent participation constraints and arbitrary risk profiles. As an example we discuss...

Network externality is a prominent feature of increasingly many products: the marginal payoff of one's consumption increases as his neighbors consume more. In- formation of network structure is important to the seller, but is often privately known to the buyers. We model a monopoly's optimal...

We consider a general screening model with payoff externalities and type-dependent feasibility constraints. The principal can design contract instruments of arbitrary dimension to influence each agent's valuation of the proposed transaction, which also depends on the anticipated choice of other...