We analyze the impact of vertical integration when a monopolistic producer can make a capital commitment before deciding on output.

Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms’ reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with...

Despite the growing concern about actual on-going climate change, there is little consensus about the scale and timing of actions needed to stabilise the concentrations of greenhouse gases. Many countries are unwilling to implement effective mitigation strategies, at least in the short-term, and...

This paper studies the effects that the revelation of information on the electorate's preferences has on voters' turnout decisions. The experimental data show that closeness in the division of preferences induces a significant increase in turnout. Moreover, for closely divided electorates (and...

This Paper analyses whether different emission trading regimes provide different incentives to participate in a cooperative climate agreement. Different incentive structures are discussed for those countries, namely the US, Russia and China, that are most important in the climate negotiation...

We analyze the problem of choosing the w contestants who will win a competition within a group of n w competitors when all jurors commonly observe who the w best contestants are, but they may be biased. We study conditions on the configuration of the jury so that it is possible to induce the...

We analyze the problem of a jury choosing the winner from a set of agents when the identity of the deserving winner is common knowledge amongst the jurors but each juror is biased in favor of one di¤erent agent. We propose a simple and natural mechanism that implements the socially optimal rule...

The U.S. banking industry has been characterized by intense merger activity in the absence of economies of scale and scope. We claim that the loosening of geographic constraints on U.S. banks is responsible for this consolidation process, irrespective of value-maximizing motives. We demonstrate...