We analyze a rational-expectations model of price formation in an intermediate-good market under uncertainty. There is a continuum of firms, each consisting of a party who can reduce production cost and a party who can discover information about demand. Both parties can make specific investments at private cost, and there is a machine that either party can control. As in incomplete-contracting models, different governance structures (i.e., different allocations of control of the machine) create different incentives for the parties’ investments. As in rational-expectations models, some parties may invest in acquiring information, which is then incorporated into the market-clearing price of the intermediate good by these parties’ production decisions. The informativeness of the price mechanism affects the returns to specific investments and hence the optimal governance structure for individual firms; meanwhile, the governance choices by individual firms affect the informativeness of the price mechanism. In equilibrium, the informativeness of the price mechanism can induce ex ante homogeneous firms to choose heterogeneous governance structures.

We consider the robustness of extensive form mechanisms to deviations from common knowledge about the state of nature, which we refer to as information perturbations . First, we show that even under arbitrarily small information perturbations the Moore-Repullo mechanism does not yield (even approximately) truthful revelation and that in addition the mechanism has sequential equilibria with undesirable outcomes. More generally, we prove that any extensive form mechanism is fragile in the sense that if a non-Maskin monotonic social objective can be implemented with this mechanism, then there are arbitrarily small information perturbations under which an undesirable sequential equilibrium also exists. Finally, we argue that outside options can help improve efficiency in asymmetric information environments, and that these options can be thought of as reflecting ownership of an asset.