The authors present a Cournot-Nash model of horizontal mergers between firms that engage in spatial price discrimination. The model extends the analysis of such mergers as presented in the U.S. Department of Justice's Merger Guidelines. Rather than conclude the evaluation of such a merger with...

In models of asymmetric information, possession of private information leads to rents for the possessors. This induces mechanism designers to distort away from efficiency. The authors show that this is an artifact of the presumption that information is independently distributed. Rent extraction...

A dynamic model with many sellers and buyers is constructed. Agents failing to trade may trade in the next period. An equilibrium is found where sellers hold identical auctions and buyers randomize over the sellers they visit. The distribution of buyer valuations is endogenous. An auction with...

Private information creates a cost of operating a hierarchy, which becomes larger as the hierarchical distance between the information source and the decision maker increases. When information about a firm's capabilities is dispersed among the individuals in the firm, production is inefficient...

Contracts that base payments on an ex post variable are examined. It is shown that a quadratic contract form may elicit truthful responses from auction participants and offer zero expected profits to the winning bidder, but not eliminate adverse incentives ex post. A general impossibility...