A number of studies, most notably Crémer and McLean (1985, 1988), have shown that in generic type spaces that admit a common prior and are of a fixed finite size, an uninformed seller can design mechanisms that extract all the surplus from privately informed bidders. We show that this result...

We consider a simple dynamic “collective reputation” model of a market for an experience good into which we introduce imperfect quality inspections. In each period two markets operate: a prime market for sellers with a good reputation, and a regular market for all other sellers. In every...

We consider the following situation. A risk-neutral plaintiff sues a risk-neutral defendant for damages that are normalized to one. The defendant knows whether she is liable or not, but the plaintiff does not. We ask what are the settlement procedure and fee-shifting rule (which, together, we...

We report an intriguing empirical observation. The relationship between corruption and output depends on the economy’s degree of openness: in open economies, corruption and GNP per capita are strongly negatively correlated; but in closed economies, there is no relationship at all. This stylized...

We consider the consequences of competition between two types of experimental exchange mechanisms, a “decentralized bargaining” market, and a “centralized” market. The experiment demonstrates that decentralized bargaining is subject to a process of unraveling in which relatively weak...

Consider an exchange economy with asymmetric information. What is the set of outcomes that are consistent with common knowledge of rationality and market clearing? We propose the concept of CKRMC as an answer to this question. The set of price functions that are CKRMC is the maximal set F with...