Information revelation in auctions

Auction theory has emphasized the importance of private information to the profits of bidders. However, the theory has failed to consider to what extent initially private information will remain private. We show that in a variety of contexts bidders will reveal their information, even if this information revelation is (ex ante) detrimental to them. Similarly, a seller may reveal her information although this revelation lowers revenues. We also show that bidders may be harmed by private information, even in contexts where more information has traditionally been presumed to be beneficial.     

Information acquisition and welfare effect in a model of competitive financial markets

We analyze welfare effect of information acquisition for a model of competitive financial markets with diverse information and rational expectations. We show that in the fully revealing rational expectations equilibrium, each agent’s gain from trade in ex ante utility decreases as more agents become informed. An implication of the result is that market efficiency and ex ante Pareto optimality are not compatible in competitive financial markets with diverse information and rational expectations. Our result can be viewed as complementary to the Grossman paradox, which shows that market efficiency and individuals’ incentives to acquire information are not compatible. This paper is the first step in a projected exploration of welfare effect of information acquisition in models with diverse information.     

Regulating regulators in transitionally competitive markets

During the course of the first thirty CRRI conferences, we have gained considerable insight about how to design regulatory policy in the presence of developing competition. The insight to date has focused on how to harness competitive forces to motivate incumbent suppliers to serve the best interests of consumers. This paper stresses the importance of considering the incentives of regulators and explores the associated changes in standard recommendations for regulatory policy design in the presence of developing competition.     

Perfectly competitive markets as the limits of cournot markets

A perfectly competitive, partial equilibrium market for a single homogeneous good with a (bounded) continuum of infinitesimal firms is considered. Cost functions are essentially unrestricted and are allowed to vary smoothly across firms. A sequence (net) of Cournot markets (each with a finite number of firms) which converge smoothly to the perfectly competitive limit in terms of both the inverse demand functions and the distributioon of firm technologies is introduced and it is shown that all markets sufficiently far along the sequence have a Cournot equilibrium and all the Cournot equilibria converge to the perfectly competitive equilibrium of the limit market.     

创业板市场:全球模式比较及对我国的启示

全球经济发展的实践表明,创业板市场在推动新经济的发展中起到了不可替代的重要作用。随着我国经济快速增长和产业结构的升级换代,在我国设立能为风险投资提供退出机制、符合国际惯例和市场化要求的创业板市场,已成为推动我国中小企业特别是中小高新企业的发展、提升我国经济实力和科技竞争力的必要条件。它的设立将是我国融资机制改革的重大突破,是建立和完善我国多层次资本市场体系的关键性一步。创业板市场能否成功运作,不仅取决于投资者和上市公司的热情,更取决于市场的定位是否合理、管理者是否具备高水平的监管能力以及市场是否拥有先…     

Imperfectly competitive factor markets and price normalization

A two-sector general equilibrium model with imperfectly competitive labor markets is set up. Noncooperative equilibria with wage setting at the sectoral level are shown to depend on the choice of price-normalization rule even though all agents behave fully rationally. Hence, imposing rationality is not sufficient to deprive the choice of price-normalization rule of its importance. It is argued that the importance of the choice of price-normalization rule may follow from the strategic interaction of agents and not from imperfectness of competition per se, and some examples are provided.     

Insider trading and information revelation with the introduction of futures markets

We establish a theoretical model with informed trading in which both of individual stock futures and its underlying stock are traded in the market. With the introduction of the futures, the paper shows that an informed trader's position of futures usually motivates him or her to trade more aggressively in the stock market at the expiration day. This also worsens the adverse selection problem and makes the stock market become less liquid. Moreover, the increase of the informed trading accelerates the information revelation and improves market efficiency on the expiration date. Finally, our results suggest that price manipulation could be one factor that affects the market liquidity and market efficiency when the futures are introduced into the market.     

Costly risk verification without commitment in competitive insurance markets

This paper analyzes the equilibrium of an insurance market where applicants for insurance have a duty of good faith when they reveal private information about their risk type. Insurers can, at some cost, verify the type of insureds who file a claim and they are allowed to retroactively void the insurance contract if it is established that the policyholder has misrepresented his risk when the contract was taken out. However, insurers cannot precommit to their risk verification strategy. The paper analyzes the relationship between second-best Pareto-optimality and the insurance market equilibrium in a game theoretic framework. It characterizes the contracts offered at equilibrium, the individuals' contract choice as well as the conditions under which an equilibrium exists.     

Codes of Best Practice in competitive markets for managers

We study the corporate governance of firms in environments where possibly heterogeneous shareholders compete for possibly heterogeneous managers. A firm, formed by a shareholder and a manager, can sign either an incentive contract or a contract including a Code of Best Practice. A Code allows for better management control, but makes it hard for managers to react quickly when market conditions change. Codes tend to be adopted in markets with low volatility and in environments where managers obtain low levels of benefits. The firms with the best projects tend to adopt a Code when managers are not too heterogeneous, while the best managers tend to be hired through incentive contracts when the projects are similar. Although the matching between shareholders and managers is often positively assortative, shareholders with the best projects might be willing to renounce hiring the best managers; instead, signing contracts including Codes with lower-ability managers.     

Allowing communities to trade in imperfectly competitive pollution-permit markets

Citizens and organizations representing them play an increasingly important role in markets for environmental quality, but much remains to be learned about how their participation affects these markets. We analyze the effects of allowing a community of citizens to trade pollution permits in an imperfectly competitive permit market. Allowing the community to trade directly reveals its preferences, which enhances welfare. However, community participation may also exacerbate distortions due to market power, even though the community itself trades competitively. Including the community in permit distribution may exacerbate market power distortions by affecting a dominant trader’s propensity to participate in the permit market. Second, the community’s demand/supply for permits may be more inelastic than other traders and worsen distortions due to market power. We illustrate in an example that these negative effects on competition can dominate the positive effect from preference revelation through the market place.      

Heterogeneous agent modelling of technology adoption in competitive agricultural markets

Slow adoption rates of innovation in rural settings are a source of frustration for technology advocates. Adoption decisions consume two valuable but limited resources: (1) time, and (2) capacity to integrate new information. We explore the structural sociological factors using a heterogeneous agent programming model (HAM) to understand the mechanics of socio-economic linkages of diffusion in rural settings. Diffusion constraints are introduced in the form of network-threshold values that reflect the cumulative effects of experience and observation of peers’ experiences. We test a range of confounding factors and find that strong social pressures dramatically increase both innovation diffusion penetration and irregularity. Clustering is caused by strong social pressures and the aggregation of buyers near innovative firms which creates a pattern of buying explosions. As competition between innovators increases, the resulting diffusion process becomes more variable and irregular and is highly likely to result in innovation monopolies in rural areas.     

Welfare effects of competitive lobbying efforts in international oligopoly markets

Conventionally, rent-seeking activities have been considered to deteriorate social welfare and to distort resource allocation. This paper examines whether rent-seeking behavior can improve social welfare by focusing on the welfare effects of firms’ competitive lobbying efforts when governments can impose market entry regulation against foreign firms. We demonstrate that competitive lobbying efforts can improve social welfare when such lobbying efforts are directed to reduce market entry barriers. In addition, social welfare can be maximized when the government shows the maximum sensitivity to the foreign firm's political contributions while maintaining competitive market structure. Moreover, it is shown that the dominant strategy for a domestic firm is to allocate more resources to R&D sectors while it is optimal for foreign firms is to exert more efforts in lobbying to reduce the market entry barriers when a government makes political economic approach in market entry regulations.     

Bargaining and markets: complexity and the competitive outcome

Rubinstein and Wolinsky (Rev. Econ. Stud. 57 (1990) 63-78) consider a simple decentralised market game in which agents meet randomly or voluntarily and bargain over the terms of trade. They show that any individually rational price can be sustained as a sequential equilibrium even though the model has a unique competitive outcome. Here, I consider Rubinstein and Wolinsky's model and show that if complexity costs of implementing strategies enter players’ preferences, together with the standard payoff in the game, then every equilibrium is stationary/Markov and induces the unique competitive price. Thus, I demonstrate that aversion to complexity may provide a justification for the competitive outcome.     

Information and behavior in experimental markets

This paper reports the results of a block of experiments designed to analyze the effects of information on market performance in experimental competitive markets. Variations in institutional structure are utilized to affect the kind and amount of information subjects could gather about prices and supply and demand conditions. More information is associated with more rapid convergence, smaller variances, and closer convergence while efficiency and mean transactions prices are unaffected.     

The efficiency of competitive equilibria in insurance markets with asymmetric information

This paper addresses the relationship between competitive equilibria and efficient allocations in an insurance market with asymmetric information. Using the definition of second-best efficiency proposed by Harris and Townsend (1981) for environments characterized by informational assmmetry, the efficiency properties of several proposed market equilibria are examined. We find an analogue to the First Optimality Theorem: A Miyazaki-Wilson equilibrium always results in a second best allocation.     

Crowding-out effect and sorting in competitive labour markets with motivated workers

This article makes a contribution to the economics literature by inducing proper self-selection into contracts based on workers’ motivation. The novelty of our results is that it points out the alternative potential role of the crowding-out effect to separate workers based on their motivation.     

The competitive nature of the Arab Middle Eastern banking markets

The competitive nature of the Arab Middle Eastern (AME) banking markets during the 1990s is the focus subject of this study. Using banks data from nine AME countries, and utilizing the so-called Rosse-Panzar test to quantitatively appraise the dominant competitive conditions in these markets between 1993–97, this study concluded that banking markets have been operating in the region under conditions of monopolistic competition. An important finding revealed by this study is that in the AME region, where two distinct economic spectrums dominate the markets, banking sector in the oil-producing countries (Gulf States) appears to be less competitive than its counterpart in non-oil countries. The authors would like to convey special thanks to the Vicerrectorado de Investigacin of UNED University, which provided financial support to publish this article, as a result of a presentation at the IAES Conference held in Athens in 2001.