In this paper, we reconsider the Rothschild-Stiglitz equilibrium of an insurance market under adverse selection. We examine the case in which insurers have heterogenous private information about the policyholder's type. This raises the problem of the transmission of information among insurers....

This paper investigates the role of fiat money in decentralized markets, where producers have private information about the quality of the goods they supply. Money is divisible, terms of trade are determined endogenously, and agents can finance their consumption with money or with real...

Adverse selection induces economic limits to market substitution. If quality uncertainty persists in both Internet and traditional marketplaces, a second-best equilibrium with parallel market segments may arise. The information cost advantage of one marketplace is exactly offset by a more severe...

In this paper we study the role of resale opportunities in secondary markets over the bidding process in first and second price auctions. This trade opportunity arises owing to the presence of two factors. On the one hand, after receiving the object, the winner obtains new information about the...

Extending the Myers and Majluf (1984) framework, we present a model for the choice of seasoned-equity selling mechanism. A sequential pooling equilibrium exists which implies a positive market reaction to certain flotation strategies. We examine the model implications using the market reaction...

A number of products that display positive network effects are used in variable quantities by heterogeneous customers. Examples include corporate operating systems, infrastructure software, web services and networking equipment. In many of these contexts, the magnitude of network effects are...

We exploit administrative data on young German workers and their employers to study the long-term effects of an early job loss. To account for non-random sorting of workers into firms with different turnover rates and for selective job mobility, we use changes over time in firm- and age-specific...

Why do firms decide sometimes to disclose widely part of their knowledge while they could have kept it secret ? We attempt to provide an original answer to this question by combining the literature in economics of innovation and in economics of incomplete information. We suggest that such...