This paper estimates the cost of using simple percentage fees rather than the broker optimal Bayesian mechanism, using data for real estate transactions in Boston in the mid-1990s. This counterfactual analysis shows that interme- diaries using the best percentage fee mechanisms with fees ranging...

Roth and Vande Vate (1991) studied the marriage problem and introduced the notion of truncation strategies and showed in an example that the unstable matchings can arise at Nash equilibria in truncations. This paper studies the college admissions problem and shows that all rematching proof or...

Equity ties between businesses change the division of the firms' joint profits, thereby affecting incentives for relation-specific investments and other strategic actions. Depending on which side owns the equity and how readily the equity can be resold, we find that the changed incentives can...

This paper analyses the behaviour of competing governments in the EC with respect to inflows of direct investment. Solving a non-cooperative sequential bargaining game in which host countries gain from direct investment through tax revenue or imposition of forced local subcontracting, it is...

Anticompetitive mergers benefit competitors more than the merging firms. We show that such externalities reduce firms' incentives to merge (a holdup mechanism). Firms delay merger proposals, thereby foregoing valuable profits and hoping other firms will merge instead - a war of attrition. The...

In the models of Young (1993a,b), boundedly rational individuals are recurrently matched to play a game, and they play myopic best replies to the recent history of play. It could therefore be an advantage to instead play a myopic best reply to the myopic best reply, something boundedly rational...

This paper tests the insiders' dilemma hypothesis in a laboratory experiment. The insiders' dilemma means that a profitable merger does not occur, because it is even more profitable for each firm to unilaterally stand as an outsider (Kamien and Zang, 1990 and 1993). The experimental data...

We demonstrate a 'preemptive merger mechanism' which may explain the empirical puzzle why mergers reduce profits, and raise share prices. A merger may confer strong negative externalilties on the firms outside the merger. If being an 'insider' is better than being an 'outsider', firms may merge...

Sports organizations, Hollywood studios and TV channels grant satellite and cable networks exclusive rights to televise their matches, movies and media contents. Exclusive distributions prevents viewers from watching attractive programs, and reduces the TV-distributors incentives to compete in...

We test the effect of the amount of information on the strategies played by others in the theoretically strategy-proof Top Trading Cycles (TTC) mechanism. We find that providing limited information on the strategies played by others has a negative and significant effect in truth-telling rates...