I evaluate a new German regulation that requires retail discounters to guarantee the availability of their products in bargain sales. The regulation is meant to prevent loss leaders. Retailers undermine the regulation's rationale by claiming that rationing is due to demand uncertainty. This...

We study the effectiveness of mediators in situations of conflict. In a game of cheap talk a principal may employ a mediator whose task is to gather information and make non--binding proposals. We show that mediators facilitate information transmission and are helpful if and only if the...

This paper extends the revelation principle to environments in which the mechanism designer cannot fully commit to the outcome induced by the mechanism. We show that he may optimally use a direct mechanism under which truthful revelation is an optimal strategy for the agent. In contrast with the...

"We study how long-term contracts condition on a natural flow of information that reduces asymmetric information over time. If such interim information is verifiable, optimal contracts achieve the first best. Under nonverifiability, the optimal contract depends on the signal's accuracy and...