American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Resource Allocation and Organizational Form GuidoFriebelJohann Wolfgang Goethe U Frankfurt and Toulouse School of Economics MichaelRaithU Rochester 1 33 We develop a theory of firm scope and structure in which merging two firms allows the integrated firm's top management to allocate resources that are costly to trade. However, information about their use resides with division managers. We show that establishing truthful upward communication raises the cost of inducing managerial effort compared with stand-alone firms. This effect dominates a positive effect on effort driven by competition for the firm's resources. We derive predictions about optimal firm scope and structure. In particular, we show why it is optimal to separate the tasks of allocating resources and running a division. (JEL D21, D23, D82, G34) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.1 10.1257/mic.2.2.1 http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mic/app/2008-0027_app.pdf American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Information Disclosure and Unraveling in Matching Markets MichaelOstrovskyStanford U MichaelSchwarzYahoo! Labs, Berkeley, CA 34 63 This paper explores information disclosure in matching markets. A school may suppress some information about students in order to improve their average job placement. We consider a setting with many schools, students, and jobs, and show that if early contracting is impossible, the same, "balanced" amount of information is disclosed in essentially all equilibria. When early contracting is allowed and information arrives gradually, if schools disclose the balanced amount of information, students and employers will not find it profitable to contract early. If they disclose more, some students and employers will prefer to sign contracts before all information is revealed. (JEL C78, D82, D83) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.34 10.1257/mic.2.2.34 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Front Matter i ii http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.i 10.1257/mic.2.2.i American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Open Access and Dynamic Efficiency TilmanKlumppEmory U XuejuanSuBates White LLC, Washington, DC 64 96 In our model, production of a final good requires access to an excludable resource owned by an integrated firm. The quality of the resource depends on an investment by the owner and impacts the downstream demand curve. Under open access, the owner must share the resource with downstream competitors at a regulated tariff. We show that quality exceeds the monopoly level, and increases with the number of competitors, if the access tariff is set according to a principle we call revenue neutrality. Our results contradict the notion that dynamic efficiency must be sacrificed for gains in static (allocative) efficiency. (JEL D21, D43, D45, L24, O34) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.64 10.1257/mic.2.2.64 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Are Speculators Unwelcome in Multi-object Auctions? MarcoPagnozziU Naples "Federico II" 97 131 I consider a uniform-price auction under complete information. The possibility of resale attracts speculators who have no use value for the objects on sale. A high-value bidder may strictly prefer to let a speculator win some of the objects and then buy in the resale market, in order to keep the auction price low. Although resale induces entry by speculators and therefore increases the number of competitors, high-value bidders' incentives to "reduce demand" are also affected. Allowing resale to attract speculators reduces the seller's revenue when bidders' valuations are dispersed. Speculators increase the seller's revenue only when they are outbid. (JEL D44, D83) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.97 10.1257/mic.2.2.97 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Truthful Revelation Mechanisms for Simultaneous Common Agency Games AlessandroPavanNorthwestern U GiacomoCalzolariU Bologna 132 90 We introduce new revelation mechanisms for simultaneous common agency games which, although they do not always permit a complete equilibrium characterization, do facilitate the characterization of the equilibrium outcomes that are typically of interest in applications. We then show how these mechanisms can be used in applications such as menu auctions, competition in nonlinear tariffs, and moral hazard settings. Lastly, we show how one can enrich the revelation mechanisms, albeit at a cost of an increase in complexity, to characterize all possible equilibrium outcomes, including those sustained by non-Markov strategies and/or mixed-strategy profiles. (JEL C72, D82, D86) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.132 10.1257/mic.2.2.132 American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article Public Goods, Social Pressure, and the Choice between Privacy and Publicity Andrew F.DaughetyVanderbilt U Jennifer F.ReinganumVanderbilt U 191 221 We model privacy as an agent's choice of action being unobservable to others. An agent derives utility from his action, the aggregate of agents' actions, and other agents' perceptions of his type. If his action is unobservable, he takes his full-information optimal action and is pooled with other types, while if observable, then he distorts it to enhance others' perceptions of him. This increases the public good, but the disutility from distortion is a social cost. When the disutility of distortion is high (low) relative to the marginal utility of the public good, a policy of privacy (publicity) is optimal. (JEL D82, H41) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.191 10.1257/mic.2.2.191 http://www.aeaweb.org/aej/mic/app/2009-0041_app.pdf American Economic Association Nashville, TN 1945-7669 1945-7685 American Economic Journal: Microeconomics http://www.aeaweb.org/aej-micro/ 2 2 May 2010 http://www.aeaweb.org/issue.php?journal=MIC&volume=2&issue=2 Journal Article The Pricing of Academic Journals: A Two-Sided Market Perspective Doh-ShinJeonToulouse School of Economics and IESE Business School Jean-CharlesRochetToulouse School of Economics 222 55 More and more academic journals are adopting an open access policy by which articles are accessible free of charge, while publication costs are recovered through author fees. We study the consequences of this open access policy on the quality standard of an electronic academic journal. If the journal's objective were to maximize social welfare, open access would be optimal. However, we show that if the journal has a different objective (such as maximizing readers' utility, the impact of the journal, or its profit), open access tends to induce it to choose a quality standard below the socially efficient level. (JEL L11, L82) http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.2.2.222 10.1257/mic.2.2.222