We study a principal-agent model. The parties are symmetrically informed at first; the principal then designs the screening mechanism and, concurrently, the process by which the agent learns his type. Because the agent can opt out of the mechanism ex post, it must leave him with nonnegative...

How effectively does a decentralized marketplace aggregate information that is dispersed throughout the economy? We study this question in a dynamic setting where sellers have private information that is correlated with an unobservable aggregate state. In any equilibrium, each seller's trading...

We study market dynamics when an owner learns over time about the quality of her asset. Since this information is private, the owner sells strategically to a less informed buyer following sufficient negative information. In response, market prices feature a "U-shape" relative to the length of...

We study transactions in which sellers fears being underpaid because their outside option is better known to the buyer. We rationalize various observed contracts as solutions to such smart buyer problems. Key to these solutions is granting the seller upside participation. In contrast, the lemons...

A principal and her worker's type is correlated via the principal's screening ability (a high ability principal is more likely to hire a high ability worker). The firm's stage payoff depends upon the worker's reputation. This paper provides a new explanation for how a spinoff (firm formed when a...

We present a dynamic model of trading under adverse selection in which a seller sequentially meets buyers, each of whom receives a noisy signal about the quality of the seller's asset and offers a price. We fully characterize the equilibrium trading dynamics and show that buyers' beliefs about...

We study trade in dynamic decentralized markets with adverse selection. Differently from the literature on the topic so far, we assume that the informed sellers make the offers, so that signaling through prices is possible. We establish basic properties of equilibria, provide necessary and...

We study repurchase options (repo contracts) in a competitive asset market with asymmetric information. Gains from trade emerge from a liquidity need, but private information about asset quality prevents the full realization of trade. We obtain a unique equilibrium, which features a pooling repo...

We study a principal-agent model. The parties are symmetrically informed at first; the principal then designs the process by which the agent learns his type and, concurrently, the screening mechanism. Because the agent can opt out of the mechanism ex post, it must leave him with nonnegative...

We report on an experiment on decentralized markets in the presence of adverse selection. When allowing for costless and non-binding communication (cheap-talk), there exists a partially separating equilibrium that results in a substantially higher efficiency level than the adverse selection...