A manufacturer chooses the optimal retail market structure and bilaterally and secretly contracts with each (homogeneous) retailer. In a classic framework without asymmetric information, the manufacturer sells through a single exclusive retailer in order to eliminate the opportunism problem....

Motivated by the recent experimental evidence on altruistic behavior, we study a simple principal–agent model where each player cares about other players' utility, and may reciprocate their attitude towards him. We show that, relative to the selfish benchmark, efficiency improves when players...

We consider a manufacturer's incentive to sell through an independent retailer, rather than directly to final consumers, when contracts with retailers cannot be observed by competitors. If retailers conjecture that identical competing manufacturers always offer identical contracts (symmetry...

We study a supply chain model where competing manufacturers located around a circle contract with privately informed and exclusive retailers. The number of brands in the market (determined by the manufacturers’ zero profit condition) depends on the level of asymmetric information within supply...

We revisit the choice of product differentiation by competing firms in the Hotelling model, under the assumption that firms are vertically separated, and that retailers choose products’ characteristics. We show that retailers with private information about their marginal costs choose to...

When do principals independently choose to share the information obtained from their privately informed agents? Information sharing affects contracting within competing organizations and induces agentsʼ strategies to be correlated through the distortions imposed by principals to obtain...