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Bundling Decisions by a Multiproduct Monopolist with Incomplete Information

Econometrica 1983 51(2), 463
This paper analyzes bundling decisions of a rnultiproduct monopolist facing uncertain demand. The monopolist sells his products using an auction mechanism and the market is analyzed as a game with incomplete information in which the buyers as well as the seller are strategic agents. With a small number of buyers, a profit maximizing seller will bundle all his output. This makes buyers uniformly worse off compared to the case where the same monopolist does not bundle, in the sense that any buyer is worse off regardless of his demand for the monopolist's outputs. With a larger number of buyers, the seller will have a tendency to unbundle his output and "high-demand" buyers are worse off than they would be if the monopolist bundled his output. "Low-demand" buyers. on the other hand. are always better off when the monopolist unbundles his output, regardless of the number of competing buyers. Despite the fact that "high demand" buyers are the typical purchasers of the monopolist's output, the net effect of increasing the number of buyers is greater market efficiency since bundling creates market inefficiencies both ex post and ex ante.

Nash Implementation Using Undominated Strategies

Econometrica 1991 59(2), 479
We study the problem of implementing social choice correspondences using the concept of undominated Nash equilibrium, i.e. Nash equilibrium in which no one uses a weakly dominated strategy. We show that this mild refinement of Nash equilibrium has a dramatic impact on the set of implementable correspondences. Our main result is that if there are at least three agents in the society, then any correspondence which satisfies the usual no veto power condition is implementable unless some agents are completely indifferent over all possible outcomes. Many common welfare criteria, such as the Pareto correspondence, and several familiar voting rules, such as majority and plurality rules, satisfy our conditions. This possibility result stands in sharp contrast to the more restrictive findings with implementation in either Nash equilibrium or subgame perfect equilibrium. We present several examples to illustrate the difference between undominated Nash implementation and implementation with alternative solution concepts.

Implementation with Incomplete Information in Exchange Economies

Econometrica 1989 57(1), 115
In this paper, we analyze the problem of designing incentive compatible mechanisms in pure exchange economic environments when agents have incomplete information. The equilibrium concept employed is Bayesian Nash equilibrium and the notion of implemantation is full implementation, which is stronger than the more commonly employed notion of truthful implementation. An allocation rule is truthfully implementable if there exists a direct mechanism to which truth telling is an equilibrium and which yields the allocation rule as its truthful equilibrium outcome. An allocation rule is fully implementable if there exists mechanism which yields the allocation rule as its unique equilibrium outcome. More generally, a set of allocation rules, or a social choice set, is fully implementable if there exist a mechanism whose equilibrium outcomes coincide with the set. This stronger notion of implemention avoids the well known problems of multiple equilibria which arise in direct revelation games. We develop a condition, termed Bayesian monotonicity, which we show is necessary for full implementation. An incentive compatibility condition is also necessary. We prove that Bayesian monotonicity and a slightly stronger incentive compatibility condition are sufficient for full implementation when there are at least three agents. We present several examples of allocation rules which do and do not satisfy our condition. One example is that of an allocation rule which is fully inplementable by an indirect mechanism, but for which every equivalent direct mechanism has multiple equilibrium outcomes.

A Characterization of Interim Efficiency with Public Goods

Econometrica 1999 67(2), 435-448
In this paper, we consider the following classical public goods problem. A group of individuals must decide on a level of public good that is produced according to constant returns to scale up to some capacity constraint. In addition to deciding the level of public good, the group must decide how to tax the individuals in the group in order to cover the cost. The distribution of the burden of taxation is important because different individuals have different marginal rates of substitution between the private good (taxes) and the public good, and may have different incomes as well. These individual marginal rates of substitution are private information; that is, each individual knows his or her own marginal rate of substitution, but not those of the other members of the group. Adopting a Bayesian mechanism design framework, we assume that the distribution of marginal rates of substitution is common knowledge.

Speculative Overpricing in Asset Markets With Information Flows

Econometrica 2012 80(5), 1937-1976
In this paper, we derive and experimentally test a theoretical model of speculation in multi-period asset markets with public information flows. The speculation arises from the traders’ heterogeneous posteriors as they make different inferences from sequences of public information. This leads to overpricing in the sense that price exceeds the most optimistic belief about the real value of the asset. We find evidence of speculative overpricing in both incomplete and complete markets, where the information flow is a gradually revealed sequence of imperfect public signals about the state of the world. We also find evidence of asymmetric price reaction to good news and bad news, another feature of equilibrium price dynamics under our model. Markets with a relaxed short-sale constraint exhibit less overpricing.

Efficiency and Voluntary Implementation in Markets with Repeated Pairwise Bargaining

Econometrica 1998 66(6), 1353
We examine a simple bargaining setting where heterogeneous buyers and sellers are repeatedly matched with each other. We begin by characterizing efficiency in such a dynamic setting, and discuss how it differs from efficiency in a centralized static setting. We then study the allocations which can result in equilibrium when the matched buyers and sellers bargain through some extensive game form. We take an implementation approach, characterizing the possible allocation rules which result as the extensive game form is varied. We are particularly concerned with the impact of making trade voluntary: imposing individual rationality on and off the equilibrium path. No buyer or seller consummates an agreement which leaves them worse off than the discounted expected value of their future rematching in the market. Finally, we compare and contrast the efficient allocations with those that could ever arise as the equilibria of some voluntary negotiation procedure.