Signal-Jamming in a Sequential Auction

In a recurring auction early bids may reveal bidders’ types, which in turn affects bidding in later auctions. Bidders take this into account and may bid in a way that conceals their private information until the last auction is played. The present paper analyzes the equilibrium of a sequence of ?rst-price auctions assuming bidders have stable private values. We show that signal-jamming occurs and explore the dynamics of equilibrium prices

NYSE changing hands: Antitrust and attempted acquisitions of an erstwhile monopoly

The Intercontinental Exchange's current attempted acquisition of NYSE-Euronext is the third takeover proposal in as many years. In this article the two previous attempts are reviewed and lessons are drawn from an antitrust and competition policy perspective concerning the evolving competitive landscape of exchanges

Signaling, Learning and Screening Prior to Trial: Informational Implications of Preliminary Injunctions

The decision to request a preliminary injunction—a court order that bans a party from certain actions until their lawfulness are ascertained in a final court ruling at trial—is an important litigation instrument in many areas of the law including antitrust, copyright, patents, trademarks, employment and labor relations as well as contracts. The process of filing for a preliminary injunction and the court's ruling on such a request generates information that can affect possible settlement decisions. We consider these implications when there is uncertainty about both the plaintiff's damages as well as the merits of case in the eyes of the court. Both plaintiff and defendant revise their beliefs about the case strength in dispute once they observe the court's ruling on preliminary injunctive relief. We study how such learning affects the likelihood of settlement. A precursor to this analysis is the study of the strategic role of preliminary injunctions as a means to signal the plaintiff's willingness to settle.preliminary injunction, learning, signaling, screening, litigation, pre-trial motion, settlement

Signaling in deterministic and stochastic settings

We contrast a standard deterministic signaling game with one where the signal-generating mechanism is stochastic. With stochastic signals a unique equilibrium emerges that involves separation and has intuitive comparative-static properties as the degree of signaling depends on the prior type distribution. With deterministic signals both pooling and separating configurations occur. Laboratory data support the theory: In the stochastic variant, there is more signaling behavior than with deterministic signals, and less frequent types distort their signals relatively more. Moreover, the degree of congruence between equilibrium and subject behavior is greater in stochastic settings compared to deterministic treatments. --experiments,learning,noise,signaling,stochastic environments

Auctions when Bidders Prepare by Investing in Ideas

We consider auction games where, prior to the auction, bidders spend resources to increase their valuations. The market game is solved by solving an equivalent auxiliary social choice problem. We show that standard auctions are fully efficient, whereas reserve price requirements entail a double inefficiency. Moreover, we explain how optimal auctions differ from the well-known static optimum, and sketch the impact of information spillovers.Auctions, procurement

Incongruities of Real and Intellectual Property: Economic Concerns in Patent Policy and Practice

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Signal-Jamming in a Sequential Auction

In a recurring auction early bids may reveal bidders’ types, which in turn affects bidding in later auctions. Bidders take this into account and may bid in a way that conceals their private information until the last auction is played. The present paper analyzes the equilibrium of a sequence of ?rst-price auctions assuming bidders have stable private values. We show that signal-jamming occurs and explore the dynamics of equilibrium prices.Auctions; Signaling; Price Competition

Adverse effects of patent pooling on product development and commercialization

The conventional wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare enhancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. This conventional wisdom relies on the effects that pooling has on downstream prices. However, it does not account for the potentially significant role of the effect of pooling on downstream innovation. The focus of this paper is on downstream product development and commercialization on the basis of perfectly complementary patents. We consider development technologies that entail spillovers between rivals, and assume that final demand products are imperfect substitutes. When pool formation facilitates information sharing and either increases spillovers in development or decreases the degree of product differentiation, patent pools can adversely affect welfare by reducing the incentives towards product development and product market competition|even with perfectly complementary patents. The analysis modifies and even negates the conventional wisdom for some settings and suggests why patent pools are uncommon in science-based industries such as biotech and pharmaceuticals that are characterized by tacit knowledge and incomplete patents

Homogeneous platform competition with endogenous homing

We develop a model for two-sided markets with consumers and producers, who interact through a platform. Typical settings for the model are the market for smartphones with phone users, app producers, and smartphone operating systems; or the video game market with game players, video game producers, and video game consoles. Only consumers who purchase the platform can access content from the producers. Consumers are heterogeneous in their gains from the producer side; and producers are heterogeneous in their costs of bringing apps to the platform. We consider competition between two homogeneous platforms that allows consumers and firms to optimize with respect to how they home, i.e. we allow both individual consumers and individual producers to multi-home or single-home depending on whether it is optimal based on their type. This leads to multiple equilibrium allocations of consumers and firms - all of which are seen in existing markets. We then find conditions under which a monopoly platform generates higher surplus than two competing homogeneous platforms

JLEO 1

Preliminary injunctions (PIs) are important in litigation in many settings, including antitrust, copyright, patent, trademark, employment and labor relations, and contracts. The filing of a PI and the court's ruling generate information that can impact settlement. We find that some plaintiffs request a PI to signal bounds on their damages in order to elicit better settlement offers. As a result, the parties are more likely to come to an out-of-court agreement permitting the disputed activity, compared to when a PI is motivated solely by defensive reasons to avert immediate damages during trial. Although the grant of a PI reduces ex post incentives for potential litigants to settle, this is more than offset by an increase in settlement upon a denial. Thus, ex ante, learning leads to more settlement. Nevertheless, the anticipation of learning and increased chances of settlement do not affect the initial filing decision. (JEL D