This paper analyzes a common-value, first-price auction with state-dependent participation. The number of bidders, which is unobservable to them, depends on the true value. For participation patterns with many bidders in each state, the bidding equilibrium may be of a "pooling" type---with high...

Many important services share the feature that the seller is also the expert who determines who much of the service is needed. Even when the outcomes of such service are observable, it might be difficult for the customer to determine what the expert actually did and whether it was needed. This...

This paper studies the problem of a monopoly who is uncertain about the demand it faces and learns about it over time through its pricing experience. The demand curve facing the monopoly is not constant--it changes over time in how it differs from an informed monopoly's policy. It turns out...

The basic intuition that motivates this paper is that the presence of non-maximizing agents creates incentives for maximizing agents to take advantage of them, and when "frictions" are sufficiently small, these incentives might translate seemingly small deviations from maximizing behavior into...

This paper discusses the regulation of oligopolistic differentiated product industries under conditions of incomplete information. The regulator can control the prices, and impose quantity restrictions, but cannot control effectivelythe quality choices of the firms. We inquire about the optimal...

We study the stability and efficiency of social and economic networks, when self-interested individuals have the discretion to form or sever links. First, in the context of two stylized models, we characterize the sets of stable networkds (immune to incentives to form or sever links) and the...

This paper investigates the functioning of markets for credence goods. These are markets in which the information asymmetries are of the form that sellers are also experts who determine customers' needs. It examines the role of customers' search for multiple opinions in disciplining experts. It...

This paper discusses the regulation of oligopolistic differentiated product industries. The regulator can control the prices, and impose quantity restrictions, but cannot control effectively the quality choices of the firms. We inquire about the optimal choice of regulatory regime--whether and...

The purpose of this paper is ti develop the theory of the firm to get better understanding of situations in which individual employees enjoy some bargaining power in their relations with the firm, and in which the terms of employment are determined and adjusted through individual contracting and...