This paper introduces the subject of private politics and presents illustrative models using as the context a conflict between an activist and a firm. Private politics addresses situations of conflict and the resolution of that conflict without reliance on the law. It encompasses the political...

The news media plays an essential role in society, but surveys indicate that the public views the media as biased. This paper presents a theory of media bias that originates with private information obtained by journalists through their investigations and persists despite profit-maximizing news...

eBay provides an online auction venue for remote and anonymous individuals to realize gains from trade. As a venue it never sees the items sold, verifies the item listings, handles settlements, or represents either the buyer or seller. Despite the associated incentive problems over five million...

This paper provides a theory of private politics in which an activist seeks to change the production practices of a firm for the purpose of redistribution to those whose interests it supports. The source of the activist's influence is the possibility of support for its cause by the public. The...

Activist NGOs have increasingly foregone public politics and turned to private politics to change the practices of firms and industries. This paper focuses on private politics, activist strategies, and nonmarket strategies of targets. A formal theory of an encounter between an activist...

Pubic policies such as reguation, antitrust, and international trade are the result of public politics--a competition over who gets what with government the arbiter of that competition. Policies are also chosen by private parties without the command or sanction of government. Private policies...

This paper presents a positive theory of corporate social responsibility set in a managerial capitalism context in which managers instead of markets allocate resources, including social expenditures. The theory focuses jointly on the operational management of the firm and on its social...

We explore the relation between certain multiple-sender cheap-talk signaling games and the corresponding screening or mechanism design games. The existence of fully-revealing equilibria in the signaling game implies the existence of implementable mechanisms that mechanisms that yield a...