Strategic Disclosure of Valuable Information within Competitive Environments

Can valuable information be disclosed intentionally by the informed agent even within a competitive environment? In this article, we bring our interest into the asymmetry in reward and penalty in the payoff structure and explore its effects on the strategic disclosure of valuable information. According to our results, the asymmetry in reward and penalty is a necessary condition for the disclosure of valuable information. This asymmetry also decides which quality of information is revealed for which incentive; if the penalty is larger than the reward or the reward is weakly larger than the penalty, there exists an equilibrium in which only a low quality type of information is revealed, in order to induce imitation. On the other hand, if the reward is sufficiently larger than the penalty, there exist equilibria in which either all types or only high quality type of information is revealed, in order to induce deviation. The evaluation of the equilibrium in terms of expected payoff yields that the equilibrium where valuable information is disclosed strategically dominates the equilibrium where it is concealed.

Endogenous Timing in Duopoly: Experimental Evidence

In this paper we experimentally investigate the extended game with observable delay of Hamilton and Slutsky (Games Econ.Beh., 1990).Firms bindingly announce a production period (one out of two periods) and then they produce in the announced sequence.Theory predicts simultaneous production in period one but we find that a substantial proportion of subjects choose the second period.Commitment;Endogenous timing;Experimental economics;Cournot;Stackel- berg

Making Sense of the Experimental Evidence on Endogenous Timing in Duopoly Markets

The prediction of asymmetric equilibria with Stackelberg outcomes is clearly the most frequent result in the endogenous timing literature. Several experiments have tried to validate this prediction empirically, but failed to find support for it. By contrast, the experiments find that simultaneous-move outcomes are modal and that behavior in endogenous timing games is quite heterogeneous. This paper generalizes Hamilton and Slutsky’s (1990) endogenous timing games by assuming that players are averse to inequality in payoffs. I explore the theoretical implications of inequity aversion and compare them to the empirical evidence. I find that this explanation is able to organize most of the experimental evidence on endogenous timing games. However, inequity aversion is not able to explain delay in Hamilton and Slutsky’s endogenous timing games.Endogenous Timing; Cournot; Stackelberg; Inequity Aversion

ENDOGENOUS MOVE STRUCTURE AND VOLUNTARY PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS: THEORY AND EXPERIMENT

In this paper we examine voluntary contributions to a public good, embedding Varian (1994)’s voluntary contribution game in extended games that allow players to choose the timing of their contributions. We show that predicted outcomes are sensitive to the structure of the extended game, and also to the extent to which players care about payoff inequalities. We then report a laboratory experiment based on these extended games. We find that behavior is similar in the two extended games: subjects avoid the detrimental move order of Varian’s model, where a person with a high value of the public good commits to a low contribution, and instead players tend to delay contributions. These results suggest that commitment opportunities may be less damaging to public good provision than previously thought.Public Goods, Voluntary Contributions, Sequential Contributions, Endogenous Timing, Action Commitment, Observable Delay, Experiment

First-mover disadvantage

This note considers a bargaining environment with two-sided asymmetric information and quasilinear preferences in which parties select bargaining mechanism after learning their valuations. I demonstrate that sometimes the buyer achieves a higher ex-ante payoff if the bargaining mechanism is selected by her opponent rather than by herself. In the model, the buyer has limited wealth and in addition to acquiring one good from the seller can purchase a different good from a competitive market. The positive relation between the values of these goods is what delivers our result

Strategic Disclosure of Valuable Information within Competitive Environments

Can valuable information be disclosed intentionally by the informed agent even within a competitive environment? In this article, we bring our interest into the asymmetry in reward and penalty in the payoff structure and explore its effects on the strategic disclosure of valuable information. According to our results, the asymmetry in reward and penalty is a necessary condition for the disclosure of valuable information. This asymmetry also decides which quality of information is revealed for which incentive; if the penalty is larger than the reward or the reward is weakly larger than the penalty, there exists an equilibrium in which only a low quality type of information is revealed, in order to induce imitation. On the other hand, if the reward is sufficiently larger than the penalty, there exist equilibria in which either all types or only high quality type of information is revealed, in order to induce deviation. The evaluation of the equilibrium in terms of expected payoff yields that the equilibrium where valuable information is disclosed strategically dominates the equilibrium where it is concealed

Estimating a War of Attrition: The Case of the U.S. Movie Theater Industry

This paper provides a tractable empirical framework to analyze firm behavior in a dynamic oligopoly when demand is declining over time. I modify Fudenberg and Tirole (1986).s model of exit in a duopoly with incomplete information to a model that can be used in an oligopoly, and combine this with an auxiliary entry model to address the initial conditions problem. I estimate this model with panel data on the U.S. movie theater industry from 1949 to 1955, using variations in TV diffusion rates across households, market structure before the exit game starts, and other market characteristics to identify the parameters in the theater’s payoff function and the distribution of unobservable fixed costs. Using the estimated model, I measure strategic delays in the exit process due to oligopolistic competition and incomplete information. The delay in exit that arises from strategic interaction is 2.7 years on average. Out of these years, 3.7% of this delay is accounted for by incomplete information, while the remaining 96.3% is explained by oligopolistic competition