dynamic adverse selection a theory of illiquidity fire sales and flight to quality we develop a dynamic equilibrium model of asset markets with adverse selection there exists a unique equilibrium in which better quality assets trade at higher prices but with a lower price dividend ratio in less liquid markets sellers of high quality assets signal quality by accepting a lower trading probability we show how the distribution of sellers private information affects an asset s price and liquidity how a change in that distribution can cause a re sale and a ight to quality and how asset purchase and subsidy programs may raise prices and liquidity and reverse the ight to quality jel d82 g12 this paper develops a dynamic equilibrium model of asset markets with adverse selection the owners of heterogeneous assets are privately informed about the quality of their assets sellers set prices for their assets recognizing that sales may be rationed at high prices buyers set prices recognizing that the quality of available assets may depend on the price selected in equilibrium sellers of high quality assets are willing to set a high price despite the low sale probability because the continuation value from failing to sell a high quality asset is high conversely sellers of low quality assets opt for a low price buyers are indifferent between paying a low price for a low quality asset and a high price for a high quality asset we prove these results in a deliberately stylized dynamic general equilibrium framework assets are perfectly durable and pay a constant dividend each period some amount of a perfectly perishable consumption good better quality assets pay a higher dividend but only the asset s current owner observes the dividend this is the source of private information and the root of the adverse selection problem as in akerlof 1970 the only permissible trades are between the consumption good and the asset individuals are risk neutral and have a discount factor that changes over time independently across individuals creating gains from trade finally discount factors are observable which ensures that patient individuals never sell assets since there are no gains from trade we believe this framework is useful for capturing

optimal interventions in markets with adverse selection we study the design of interventions to stabilize financial markets plagued by adverse selection our contribution is to analyze the information revealed by participation decisions taking part in a government program carries a stigma and outside options are mechanism dependent we show that the efficiency of an intervention can be assessed by its impact on the market interest rate the pres ence of an outside market determines the nature of optimal interven tions and the choice of financial instruments debt guarantees in our model but it does not affect implementation costs jel d82 d86 g01 g20 g31

reciprocal relationships and mechanism design we study an incomplete information game in which players can coordinate their actions by contracting among themselves we model this relationship as a reciprocal contracting procedure where each player has the ability to make commitments contingent on the other players commitments we differ from the rest of the literature on reciprocal contracting by assuming that punishments cannot be enforced in the event that cooperation breaks down we fully characterize the outcomes that can be supported as perfect bayesian equilibrium outcomes in such an environment we use our characterization to show that the set of supportable outcomes with reciprocal contracting is larger than the set of outcomes available in a centralized mechanism design environment in which the mechanism designer is constrained by his inability to enforce punishments against non participants the difference stems from the players ability in our contracting game to convey partial information about their types at the time they offer contracts we discuss the implications of our analysis for modelling collusion between multiple agents interacting with the same principal

competitive non linear pricing and bundling we examine the impact of multiproduct nonlinear pricing on profit consumer surplus and welfare in a duopoly when consumers buy all their products from one firm the one stop shopping model nonlinear pricing leads to higher profit and welfare but often lower consumer surplus than linear pricing by contrast in a unit demand model where consumers may buy one product from one firm and another product from another firm bundling generally acts to reduce profit and welfare and to boost consumer surplus in a more general model where consumers may buy from more than one firm and where consumers have elastic demands for each product nonlinear pricing has ambiguous effects compared with linear pricing nonlinear pricing tends to raise profit but harm consumer surplus when i demand is elastic ii there is substantial product differentiation iii there is substantial heterogeneity in consumer demand iv consumers face substantial shopping costs when visiting more than one firm and v a consumer s brand preference for one product is strongly correlated with her brand preference for another product nonlinear pricing is more likely to lead to welfare gains when i ii iv and v hold but iii does not

optimal auction with resale this paper investigates the design of seller optimal auctions when winning bidders can attempt to resell the good in that case the optimal allocation characterized by myerson 1981 cannot be achieved without resale i find a sufficient and necessary condition for sincere bidding given the possibility of resale in two bidder cases i prove that the myerson allocation can be achieved under standard conditions supplemented with two assumptions with three or more bidders achieving the myerson allocation is more difficult i prove that it can be implemented in special cases in those cases the myerson allocation is generated through a sequence of resale auctions each optimally chosen by a reseller

limited liability and incentive contracting with ex ante action choices abstract this article examines a principal agent model of financial contracting in which a risk neutral entrepreneur agent makes an unobservable ex ante effort choice while employing the investment funds of a risk neutral investor principal the key innovation is that the investment contract is subject to statutory liability limits given these liability limits two settings are considered one in which the investor payoff function is also constrained to be monotonically nondecreasing in firm profit and another in which no such monotonic contract constraint is imposed in the former case a standard debt contract is shown to emerge and a first best effort choice is not achieved in the latter setting the optimum is characterized by a live or die payoff function and a first best effort level may or may not be realized

strategic liquidity supply and security design we study how securities and issuance mechanisms can be designed to mitigate the adverse impact of market imperfections on liquidity in our model asset owners seek to obtain liquidity by selling claims contingent on privately observed future cash flows liquidity suppliers can be competitive or strategic in the optimal trading mechanism associated to an arbitrary given security issuers with low cash flows sell their entire holdings of the security while issuers with high cash flows are typically excluded from trade by designing the security optimally issuers can avoid exclusion altogether we show that the optimal security is debt because of its low informational sensitivity debt mitigates the adverse selection problem furthermore by pooling all issuers with high cash flows debt also reduces the ability of a monopolistic liquidity supplier to exclude them from trade in order to better extract rents from issuers with lower cash flows

the principal agent relationship with an informed principal ii common values in many circumstances a principal may have relevant private information when she proposes a contract to an agent we analyze such a principal agent relationship as a noncooperative game the principal proposes a contract which is accepted or rejected by the agent who for most of our analysis has no private information the contract is executed if accepted otherwise the reservation allocation takes effect this allocation may be determined by a pre existing contract which the principal by her proposal is attempting to renegotiate or it may simply be the no trade point in this paper we assume that the principal s information directly affects the agent s payoff before solving the game we discuss pareto efficiency with asymmetric information we define an incentive compatible allocation to be weakly interim efficient wie if there exists no alternative incentive compatible allocation that both parties prefer for all possible beliefs that the agent might have about the principal s private information type we show that any wie allocation is interim efficient ie for some beliefs the rothschild stiglitz wilson rsw allocation relative to the reservation allocation l is the allocation that maximizes the payoff of each type of principal within the class of incentive compatible allocations that guarantee the agent at least the utility he gets from a irrespective of his beliefs about the principal s type the equilibrium set of the contract proposal game consists of the allocations that weakly pareto dominate the rsw allocation thus there is a unique equilibrium outcome if and only if the latter is ie and the equilibrium outcome is the rsw allocation itself after characterizing the equilibrium allocations we study those that are renegotiation proof when either the principal or the agent leads the renegotiation we then compare our contract proposal game which is a signaling model with its screening counterpart we conclude by extending our results to the case in which the agent as well as the principal has private information under the assumption of quasi linear preferences

currency competition a hayekian perspective on international monetary integration currency internationalization is examined from the vantage point of friedrich hayek s contributions in the 1970s compared with received commentaries in which only an idealized case for private money is attributed to hayek this paper underscores other dimensions of hayek s work on money and currency hayek s case for choice in currency draws on his theory of competition anticipates competition between government suppliers of fiat money accommodates many aspects of international monetary integration and embodies a distinctive approach to monetary independence choice of exchange rate regime and the transnationalization of currency hayekian predictions are outlined for future developments in currency competition

investment in site specific crop management under uncertainty implications for nitrogen pollution control and environmental policy this paper applies an option pricing model to analyze the impact of uncertainty about output prices and expectations of declining fixed costs on the optimal timing of investment in site specific crop management sscm it also analyzes the extent to which the level of spatial variability in soil conditions can mitigate the value of waiting to invest in sscm and influence the optimal timing of adoption and create a preference for custom hiring rather than owner purchase of equipment numerical simulations show that while the net present value npv rule predicts that immediate adoption is profitable under most of the soil conditions considered here recognition of the option value of investment indicates that it is preferable to delay investment in sscm for at least 3 years unless average soil quality is high and the variability in soil quality and fertility is high the use of the option value approach reveals that the value of waiting to invest in sscm raises the cost share subsidy rates required to induce immediate adoption above the levels indicated by the npv rule

the paradox of financial fire sales the role of arbitrage capital in determining liquidity how can fire sales for financial assets happen when the economy contains well capitalized but non specialist investors our explanation combines rational expectations equilibrium and lemons models when specialist informed market participants are liquidity constrained prices become less informative this creates an adverse selection problem decreasing the supply of high quality assets and lowering valuations by non specialist uninformed investors who become unwilling to supply capital to support the price in normal times arbitrage capital can multiply itself by making uninformed capital function as informed capital but in a crisis this stabilizing mechanism fails

competitive price discrimination we model firms as supplying utility directly to consumers the equilibrium outcome of competition in utility space depends on the relationship u between profit and average utility per consumer public policy constraints on the deals firms may offer affect equilibrium outcomes via their effect on u f rom this perspective we examine the profit utility and welfare implications of price discrimination policies in an oligopolistic framework we also show that an equilibrium outcome of competitive nonlinear pricing when consumers have private information about their tastes is for firms to offer efficient two part tariffs

renegotiation and information revelation over time the case of optimal labor contracts the paper analyzes the issue of commitment in grossman and hart s model of optimal labor contracts under asymmetric information about firm profitability we extend their framework by allowing employment to vary over time at equidistant intervals when both parties can precommit ex ante not to renegotiate the contract this replicates the grossman hart outcome each subperiod when precommitment is not possible information revealed through the contract can create pareto improving renegotiation opportunities and the issue of optimal information revelation arises the paper analyzes the impact of ex post pareto improving renegotiations on the optimal contract

nonlinear pricing with random participation the canonical selection contracting programme takes the agent s participation decision as deterministic and finds the optimal contract typically satisfying this constraint for the worst type upon weakening this assumption of known reservation values by introducing independent randomness into the agents outside options we find that some of the received wisdom from mechanism design and nonlinear pricing is not robust and the richer model which allows for stochastic participation affords a more general empirical specification we develop a multidimensional methodology for addressing this class of problems providing two important applications to nonlinear pricing first with nonlinear pricing by a monopolist the familiar nodistortion at the top result persists but in tandem with the surprising conclusion that there is either no distortion at the bottom or bunching second in a simple model of product differentiated duopolists competing with nonlinear pricing we show that generally the duopoly outcome is qualitatively similar to the monopoly outcome however when marginal costs are symmetric and competition is sufficiently intense distortions disappear and the equilibrium outcome takes a remarkably simple form efficient quality allocations with cost plus fee pricing

adverse selection and renegotiation in procurement as was shown by dewatripont optimal long term contracts are generally not sequentially optimal the parties ex post renegotiate them to their mutual advantage this paper fully characterizes the equilibrium of a simple two period procurement situation and studies the extent to which renegotiation reduces ex ante welfare i a central result is that like in the non commitment case the second period allocation is optimal for the principal conditionally on his posterior beliefs about the agent ii the first period allocation exhibits an increasing amount of pooling when the discount factor grows iii with a continuum of types it is never optimal to induce full separation the paper also analyzes whether renegotiated long term contracts yield outcomes resembling those under either unnegotiated long term contracts or a sequence of short term contracts and it links the analysis with the multiple unit durable good monopoly problem

using stock price information to regulate firms this paper examines the role of the information contained in stock prices in the regulation of privatized firms stock prices contain noisy but unbiased information about firm s future prospects that regulators can use to decide on some regulatory policies the main argument developed is that the observation of stock price movements reduces the incentives of regulators to develop their own monitoring technologies and can allow them to commit to relatively lighthanded regulations this protects firm s investments in cost reduction activities and can increase ex ante welfare this article is concerned with the analysis of the interactions between the public listing of regulated companies and their regulation the central idea is that public listing modifies the information structure of regulators and thus the regulation implemented some evidence can motivate this view

contracting with externalities the paper studies inefficiencies arising in contracting between one principal and n agents when the utility of each agent depends on all agents trades with the principal when the principal commits to a set of publicly observable bilateral contract offers the arising inefficiency is due entirely to the externalities imposed on non signers in contrast when the principal s offers are privately observed the distortion is due to the externalities given agents equilibrium trades comparison of the two externalities determines the relative efficiency of the two contracting regimes in both cases we show that when n is large each agent can be treated as non pivotal provided that appropriate continuity assumptions are satisfied we also study the case in which the principal can condition each agent s trade on other agents messages we characterize the set of such mechanisms in which each agent s participation is voluntary when the principal can commit to any such mechanism she implements the first best outcome while threatening each deviator with the harshest possible punishment however in the presence of noise that goes to zero slower than n goes to infinity in the limit we obtain a generally inefficient outcome in which each agent feels non pivotal

design innovation and fashion cycles a model of fashion cycles is developed in which designs are used as a signaling device in a dating game a monopolist periodically creates a new design over time the price of the design falls as it spreads across the population once sufficiently many consumers own the design it is profitable to create a new design and thereby render the old design obsolete this paper gives conditions under which all consumers would be better off by banning the use of fashion competition among designers may lead to less frequent changes in fashion and to higher prices than monopoly copyright 1995 by american economic association

technology adoption in the presence of network externalities we analyze technology adoption in industries where network externalities are significant the pattern of adoption depends on whether technologies are sponsored a sponsor is an entity that has property rights to the technology and hence is willing to make investments to promote it key findings include the following 1 compatibility tends to be undersupplied by the market but excessive standardization can occur 2 in the absence of sponsors the technology superior today has a strategic advantage and is likely to dominate the market 3 when one of two rival technologies is sponsored that technology has a strategic advantage and may be adopted even if it is inferior 4 when two competing technologies both are sponsored the technology that will be superior tomorrow has a strategic advantage

contract renegotiation and coasian dynamics consider a long term relationship between a seller and a buyer whose valuation for a per period service or a durable good is private as trade progresses the valuation will be partially revealed and it may be impossible for the parties to commit ex ante not to take advantage of this we analyse this situation first by supposing that the parties can sign a sequence of short term contracts and secondly by supposing that they can sign a long term contract but cannot commit not to renegotiate it later we find a close relationship in the second case between the optimal long term contract and the non commitment outcome in the standard coasian durable good model our results also have implications for hidden information principal agent models

non exclusive competition in the market for lemons in order to check the impact of the exclusivity regime on equilibrium allocations we set up a simple akerlof like model in which buyers may use arbitrary taris under exclusivity we obtain the zero profit separating riley rothschilds stiglitz allocation under non exclusivity there is also a unique equilibrium allocation that involves a unique price as in akerlof 1970 these results can be applied to insurance in the dual model in yaari 1987 and have consequences for empirical tests of the existence of asymmetric information

outside and inside liquidity we propose an origination and contingent distribution model of banking in which liquidity demand by short term investors can be met with cash reserves inside liquidity or sales of assets outside liquidity to long term investors outside liquidity is a more e cient source but asymmetric information about asset quality can introduce a friction in the form of excessively early asset trading in anticipation of a liquidity shock excessively high cash reserves and too little origination of assets by banks the model captures elements of the current flnancial crisis and yields policy prescriptions on public liquidity provision to overcome liquidity crises

asymmetric auctions with resale we study first and second price auctions with resale in a model with indepen dent private values with asymmetric bidders the resulting inefficiencies create a motive for post auction trade which in our model takes place via monopoly pricing the winner makes a take it or leave it offer to the loser we show a a first price auction with resale has a unique monotonic equilibrium and b with resale the expected revenue from a first price auction exceeds that from a second price auction the inclusion of resale possibilities thus permits a gen eral revenue ranking of the two auctions that is not available when these are excluded jel d44

fear of fire sales illiquidity seeking and credit freezes is there any need to clean up a banking system in the midst of a crisis for instance by closing some weak banks and forcing others to sell bad assets or can one wait till the crisis is over we argue that an overhang of impaired banks that may be forced to sell assets in the future can increase the private returns to holding illiquid assets sufficiently that weak banks have no interest in selling them anticipating a potential future fire sale cash rich buyers have high expected returns to holding cash which also reduces their incentive to lock up money in term loans the potential for a worse fire sale than necessary as well as the associated decline in credit origination could make the crisis worse which is one reason it may make sense to clean up the system even in the midst of the crisis we discuss alternative ways of cleaning up the system and the associated costs and benefits

auctions with resale markets an application to u s forest service timber sales when bidders anticipate an opportunity for resale trade the value of winning an auction is determined in part by the option values of buying and selling in the secondary market one implication is that a bidder s willingness to pay at an auction increases with the expected level of competition between resale buyers empirical evidence from auctions of timber contracts supports this prediction and rejects standard models that ignore resale the estimated effect is smaller after policy changes expected to diminish the prevalence of resale additional evidence supports the predicted presence of a common value element introduced by the resale opportunity

overcoming adverse selection how public intervention can restore market functioning as illustrated by liquidity support equity injections and asset repurchases in financial crises and by imf credit lines to countries authorities often intervene in orderto revive markets that have dried up or to create newones in suchsituations agents participate only if they receive from the governmental scheme more than in the marketplace while the market outcome depends on who joins the scheme the paper provides a first analysis of market jumpstarting and its two way interaction between mechanism design and participation constraints in the model sellers in need of cash have private information about the value of their legacy asset the absence of buyer confidence forces authorities to intervene to jump start the market we characterize the optimal intervention and draw two main implications first the government should clean up the market through buybacks of the weakest assets and then through some equity injections and leave the agents with the strongest legacy assets to the market in particular authorities should not substitute fully for the market even when they have no comparative disadvantage in acquiring assets or shares thereof second the government creates its own competition by cleaning up the market from its most toxic pieces at the optimal intervention the government always strictly overpays for the legacy asset yet and unlike what would be suggested by coasian profit evasion the existence of a later market imposes no welfare cost while it is cast in a public intervention context the analysis of mechanismdependent reservation utilities also admits important private sector applications

adverse selection in durable goods markets we present a dynamic model of adverse selection to examine the interactions between new and used goods markets we find that the used market never shuts down the volume of trade can be large and distortions are lower than previously thought new cars prices can be higher under adverse selection than in its absence an extension to several brands that differ in reliability leads to testable predictions of the effects of adverse selection unreliable brands have steeper price declines and lower volumes of trade we contrast these predictions with those of a model where brands physically depreciate at different rates

collusion via resale the english auction is susceptible to tacit collusion when post auction interbidder resale is allowed we show this by constructing equilibria where with positive probability one bidder wins the auction without any competition and divides the spoils by optimally reselling the good to the other bidders these equilibria interim pareto dominate among bidders the standard value bidding equilibrium without requiring the bidders to make any commitment on bidding behavior or postbidding spoil division

public trading and private incentives this article studies the link between public trading and the activity of a firm s large shareholder who can affect firm value public trading results in the formation of a stock price that is informative about the large shareholder s activity this increases the latter s incentives to engage in value increasing activities indeed if he has to liquidate part of his stake before the effect of his activity is publicly observed a more informative price rewards him for his activity implications are derived for the decision to go public capital structure and security design we consider a firm with a large shareholder and otherwise dispersed shares which are publicly traded the block holder is an insider in the sense that he can undertake actions that directly affect the firm s value moreover the insider might not take all value increasing actions as at least some of them involve a private cost for him in other words there is an incentive problem the article s main premise is that public trading as part of the price formation process generates information not only about exogenous factors affecting firm value but also about the insider s activity for instance as a result of public trading a firm s stock price will incorporate the market s evaluation of how a controlling shareholder allocates corporate resources we identify two sources of incentives for the insider to engage in activities that will increase firm value the first one is his stake in the firm since the insider participates in a value increase in proportion to his equity stake a larger stake increases the benefit to him from the firm value being high the view that large shareholders affect firm value is indeed widespread shleifer and vishny 1997 they alleviate the free rider problem pervasive in firms with passive dispersed investors unable or unwilling to affect the firm s operations that is outsiders