A standard presumption of market microstructure models is that competition between risk-neutral market makers inevitably leads to price schedules that leave market makers zero expected profits conditional on the order flow. This article documents an important lack of robustness of this...

The authors explore strategic trade in short‐lived securities by agents who have private information that is potentially long‐term, but do not know how long their information will remain private. Trading short‐lived securities is profitable only if enough of the private information becomes...

This article explores human capital acquisition decisions when job placement helps determine competition for a worker. With asymmetric information, workers may invest in firm-specific capital without long-term contracts. Specific investment increases promotion chances (and hence wage...

When creditors do not honor human capital as collateral, firms can mediate financially by offering workers long-term wage contracts. The optimal contract specifies a wage consisting of a spot general skill component plus a component equal to the expected time-averaged value of the worker's...

This paper develops a dynamic evolutionary model in which agents make choices on the basis of relative performance criteria. We distinguish two classes of learned behavior: imitative dynamics and a new class of dynamics, "introspective dynamics." Under imitative dynamics, agents compare payoffs...

This paper considers a durable goods monopolist who can commit to prices at each date, total output, and possibly release dates for stock. The monopolist faces a finite number of arbitrarily patient consumers. Surprisingly, if the monopolist would earn. When the monopolist can also commit to...

Sticky nominal prices represent a cornerstone of many macroeconomic models. The effects of price adjustment on strategic firm interaction and the resulting price series implications are less established. This paper develops a spatial economy to analyze these interactions. In the two period...