Economic Theory Commons^™

Essays On Mechanism Design And The Informed Principal Problem, Nicholas C. Bedard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Three models of a privately informed contract designer (a principal) are examined. In the first, I study how much private information the principal wants to acquire before offering a contract to an agent. Despite allowing her to acquire all information for free, I prove in a general environment that there is a nontrivial set of parameters for which it is strictly suboptimal for the principal to be completely informed, regardless of the continuation equilibrium following any information acquisition choice. This result holds even when the principal is able to employ the most general mechanisms available and, in particular, when she …

Essays On Forward Trading, Environmental Quality And Investor Behavior, And The Wta-Wtp Disparity, Jens Schubert

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays that study (i) collusion in forward markets, (ii) investor behavior in response to ecological disasters, and (iii) the willingness to accept - willingness to pay disparity in the presence of uncertainty.

Chapter 1 reports the results of a laboratory experiment that examines the strategic effect of forward contracts on market power in infinitely repeated duopolies. Two competing effects motivate the experimental design. Allaz and Vila (1993) argue that forward markets act like additional competitors in that they increase quantity competition among firms. Conversely, Liski and Montero (2006) argue that forward contracting can facilitate collusive …