We investigate the problem of selecting capital investments in an organizational context with asymmetric information. In a principal-agent model where a manager (agent) has superior information about the investment costs of n available mutually exclusive projects, we develop the owner´s...

In a Hotelling market with endogenous choice of product characteristics increasing market transparency on the consumer side leads to less product differentiation, and lower prices and profits. This is welfare improving for all consumers and total surplus increases.

This paper studies price signaling in a multi-sender context with two competing firms. Either firm may offer a high or a low quality, but potential customers are, initially, incompletely informed about the quality available at a given outlet. In particular, consumers do not know a priori whether...

We investigate the choice of market variable, price or quantity, of an optimal implicit cartel. If the discount factor is high, the cartel can realize the monopoly profit in both cases. Otherwise, it is optimal for the cartel to rely on quantities in the collusive phase if goods are substitutes...

We model a two period monopoly market with two-sided quality uncertainty. In first period, seller gathers information about consumers´ tastes upon observing its sales. In second period, seller may or may not deliver the information. If monopolist must commit either to reveal or conceal...

We analyze firms’ incentives to cluster in an industrial district to benefit from reciprocal technology spillovers. A simple model of cumulative innovation is presented where technology spillovers arise endogenously through labor mobility. It is shown that firms’ incentives to cluster are...

We consider economies with incomplete markets, production, an a given distribution of initial endowments. The main purpose of the paper is to present a robust example of an economy with only one firm and one good per state in which no production decision entails a constrained efficient outcome....

We study a situation in which an R&D department promotes the introduction of an innovation that results in costly re-adjustments for a production department. In response, the production department tries to resist change by improving the existing technology. We show that firms balancing the...

We survey some of the literature on the effects of improved market transparency on competition in oligopoly. Generally, improved transparency from the perspective of firms makes detection of deviations from tacitly collusive agreements easier, thus facilitating oligopolistic coordination. On the...

This paper investigates the effects on tacit collusion of increased market transparency on the consumer side as well as on the producer side of a market. Increasing market transparency on the consumer side, increases the benefits to a firm from undercutting the collusive price. It also decreases...