We analyze communication about the social returns to investment in a public good. We model two agents who have private information about these returns as well as their own taste for cooperation, or social preferences. Before deciding to contribute or not, each agent submits an unverifiable...

The paper starts with a description of major reforms of EU policy in the network industries. Based on the normative economics of regulation, it then points out generic information and transaction cost problems of regulatory policy making. An appropriate allocation of regulatory competencies may...

The paper starts with a description of major reforms of EU policy in the network industries. Based on the normative economics of regulation, it then points out generic information and transaction cost problems of regulatory policy making. An appropriate allocation of regulatory competencies may...

We study a standard collective action problem in which successful achievement of a group interest requires costly participation by some fraction of its members. How should we model the internal organization of these groups when there is asymmetric information about the preferences of their...

This paper examines the phenomenon of management-initiated, court-supervised reorganization of companies in U.S. bankruptcy court. The proposed in-court persuasion mechanism reconciles excessive reorganizations of non-viable companies (and subsequent repeat failures) with management-initiated...

A large literature in strategy and management has focused on why firms self-regulate and "signal green." We show this decision becomes more complex when regulators have enforcement discretion, and both firms and regulators act strategically. We model the managerial decision whether to signal the...

In this note I give a full characterization of all deterministic direct mechanisms in the public good provision problem with independent private values that are dominant strategy incentive compatible, ex-post individually rational, and ex-post budget balanced.

Consider a mechanism for the binary public good provision problem that is dominant strategy incentive compatible (DSIC), ex-post individually rational (EPIR), and ex-post budget balanced (EPBB). Suppose this mechanism has the additional property that the utility from participating in the...