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on Microeconomics |
| By: | Lukyanov, Georgy |
| Abstract: | Success under a demanding method does not show that its additional demands are worthwhile. I study this distinction in a model of intergenerational learning with hidden effort. Moderate effort is informative about the value of a less demanding method; high effort produces more successes but no information about that question. I first characterize efficient experimentation with a complete record. I then show that parents who underweight descendants’ effort costs can induce earlier retirement from experimentation. On an explicit region of priors, a paternalistic equilibrium stops after one failed experiment, whereas an aligned equilibrium allows two. Both transmit the relevant record truthfully and withstand communication deviations: every sender already obtains its preferred full-record continuation. Nevertheless, paternalism lowers discounted material welfare, raises long-run effort and success, and leaves less informative public evidence. Under stronger paternalism, parents may instead conceal knowledge to induce experimentation. I characterize a pooling continuation, establish its local communication stability, and show that it can occur in a full equilibrium. The results distinguish the efficient limits to learning from the additional loss of evidence caused by disagreement over effort costs. |
| Keywords: | experimentation; intergenerational communication; paternalism; effort; social learning |
| JEL: | C72 C73 D64 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132286 |
| By: | Lukyanov, Georgy; Yosifov, Yaroslav |
| Abstract: | Global games select a unique cutoff when a player’s incentive moves monotonically with private information. We show that this logic can fail when a privately informed participant can take a costly, simultaneous, and unobserved action that defends the status quo. In a currency-attack model, the defender acts only at intermediate signals. Along the traders’ cutoff equation, this interval response creates an endogenous defense-loss term that vanishes at the endpoints of an activation component but can dominate the decreasing benchmark payoff margin in between. We establish a primitive region in which defense is inactive and uniqueness survives, and a finite-CDF overshoot condition under which two active defense cutoff roots coexist with the inactive benchmark root. Because marginal indifference need not imply global incentives, we also give sufficient conditions for a genuine monotone cutoff best response. Finally, outward-rounded interval arithmetic proves that a proper-prior parameter vector has exactly three symmetric monotone-cutoff equilibria and that this topology persists locally. The result isolates a payoff-based boundary of global-game selection: hidden intervention can restore multiplicity without public signalling or a perturbation of the information hierarchy. |
| Keywords: | global games; regime change; active defense; private information; equilibrium multiplicity; computer-assisted proof |
| JEL: | C72 D82 F31 |
| Date: | 2026–10–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132281 |
| By: | Rey, Patrick; Iossa, Elisabetta |
| Abstract: | We study how the precision of merger review a¤ects rmsincentives to generate merger-specific efficiencies. Before the review, merging parties can invest in a project combining complementary assets; the project can be implemented only if the merger is approved. The merger control authority observes a noisy signal about these efficiencies and approves if the evidence satises a consumer-surplus standard. In a binary-investment benchmark with exogenous signal threshold, greater signal precision fosters investment incentives. The same holds locally with continuous investment and holds as well with Bayesian approval. Better information can therefore strengthen, rather than weaken, incentives to generate merger efficiencies. |
| Keywords: | merger control; investment; innovation; e¢ ciencies; information; antitrust |
| JEL: | L13 L41 O31 D82 |
| Date: | 2026–10–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132272 |
| By: | Canta, Chiara; D’Annunzio, Anna; Lefouili, Yassine |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of privacy regulation on data-driven innovation and welfare in the healthcare sector. A platform providing medical services (e.g., a hospital) collects patient data and may sell non-rival access to downstream innovators. Without data externalities, consent can induce inefficiently low data sharing because the platform cannot identify privacy-concerned patients and captures only part of the social value of innovation. Consequently, requiring consent can reduce welfare for intermediate privacy costs. When one patient’s disclosure reveals information about others, consent decisions become strategic complements. These externalities reduce the compensation required for disclosure and can instead produce excessive sharing, potentially justifying additional restrictions on compensation or data sharing. If the platform controls innovator access, consent can induce excessive restrictions without data externalities, whereas sufficiently strong externalities can lead the platform to admit too many innovators. |
| Keywords: | Data sharing; privacy; consent policy; innovation; healthcare. |
| JEL: | D83 L15 L51 |
| Date: | 2026–10–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132282 |
| By: | Martimort, David; Li, Yue; Rama, Martin; Straub, Stéphane |
| Abstract: | We develop a theory of urban governance based on the allocation of residual claims over urban surplus. A developer undertakes non-verifiable investments that attract productive residents and generate agglomeration benefits. We compare five urban governance modes: two single-agent modes, public and private ownership of the developer, and three hybrid arrangements. Public ownership internalizes urban rents but weakens investment incentives. Private ownership restores these incentives but restricts access because the developer does not capture property-market rents. We characterize this trade-off and study the three hybrid arrangements. Performance contracts subsidize access, equity contributions make quality observable and contractible, and rights transfers consolidate access and property rights. These arrangements provide alternative ways to improve urban development when investment is non-verifiable. |
| Keywords: | Urban Development; Urban Governance; Public–Private Partnerships;; Contract Theory |
| JEL: | D86 H54 L33 R58 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132243 |
| By: | Sarah Auster (University of Bonn, Department of Economics & CEPR); Helene Mass (Department of Economics & University of Vienna) |
| Abstract: | We study the value of commitment in verifiable disclosure games when the receiver faces non-quantifiable uncertainty about the evidence environment. The sender has stochastic access to hard evidence and may disclose or suppress it; the receiver chooses a decision rule to maximize her payoff guarantee. When ambiguity concerns the payoff state, the receiver has strict incentives to soften her standards ex post after non-disclosure, making commitment strictly valuable. When ambiguity concerns the sender’s expertise, incentives reverse: the receiver prefers a stricter reaction than is ex-ante optimal, so prespecified, hard-wired rules for non-disclosure improve payoffs for both sides. |
| Keywords: | Ambiguity, Commitment |
| JEL: | D81 D82 D86 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:435 |
| By: | She, Huixin |
| Abstract: | Digital platforms display sellers' prices and collect ad valorem commissions. We study how these roles shape sellers' disclosure choices and a platform's incentives to regulate them. Sellers offer a base good and an avoidable add-on, which some consumers overlook when choosing sellers. Because commissions apply to the base good but not off-platform add-ons, add-on profit is passed through more than one-for-one into lower base-good prices, creating a competition multiplier. Hidden add-on prices can reduce efficiency while raising consumer surplus through this mechanism. A platform regulates disclosure to protect commission revenue, while mandatory transparency can improve efficiency but reduce consumer surplus. |
| Keywords: | Platform governance; add-on pricing; consumer myopia; market transparency;; ad-valorem commissions; shrouding, information disclosure |
| JEL: | D11 D21 D82 L12 L15 L81 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132263 |
| By: | Federico Echenique; Yu-Ting Ho |
| Abstract: | We analyze auctions with interdependent values and horizontally differentiated bidders, where good news for one bidder is bad news for the other bidders. This generates a winner's bliss, reversing the well-known winner's curse: winning means buying an object that is more valuable than a na\"{\i}ve estimate suggests. Our main result is about the English auction. We introduce the ``own effect property, '' generalizing the single-crossing condition, to prove the existence of an efficient ex-post equilibrium. Regarding revenue, we show that with affiliated signals, the English auction yields no more revenue than the second-price auction, while independent signals yield the standard revenue equivalence. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.25576 |
| By: | Linchen Zhang |
| Abstract: | I study the coarse revenue guarantee (CRG) of the single-unit first-price auction with common values. The CRG is the minimum expected revenue over all information structures and all Bayes coarse correlated equilibria (BCCE), the equilibrium notion to which no-regret learning leads. Identical play, in which all bidders submit the same bid, attains the worst-case revenue, and this reduction yields a closed-form characterization. The coarse guarantee is positive and increases with the number of bidders $N$. It lies strictly below the revenue guarantee of Bergemann, Brooks and Morris (2017) at every finite $n$, and the gap between the two closes at rate $\log N / N$. I extend the analysis to reserve prices, symmetric and asymmetric priors, other standard auctions, and an unknown value distribution. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.24901 |
| By: | Andrew Koh; Ricky Li |
| Abstract: | When is social learning efficient if agents have heterogeneous preferences over a set of actions? When myopic agents generate information only about the action they choose, efficiency requires balance such that all high-value actions are discovered. We characterize the value of policies that control the flow of past information to future agents. Under full transparency of past information, the probability of efficient outcomes is approximately one if and only if the prior and preferences are balanced and the log-likelihood ratio distribution satisfies a set of intuitive moment conditions. Noisy bad news is a canonical example. By contrast, approximate efficiency is obtainable on the set of arbitrary adaptive information policies if and only if the prior alone is balanced. Moreover, it suffices to use adaptive evidence policies which permanently and fully disclose subsets of past information. When the prior is imbalanced and approximate efficiency is unattainable, we characterize the value of adaptive information and show that it is uniformly approximated by the value of adaptive evidence as the impact of each individual signal on beliefs vanishes. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.25814 |
| By: | Barış Kaymak |
| Abstract: | This paper compares equilibrium bidding strategies in a first-price sealed-bid auction with two asymmetric bidders who have dependent private valuations. Modeling bidder strength via a stochastic asymmetry condition – where one bidder is systematically more likely to hold the maximum valuation – I show that the globally weak bidder, facing a competitive disadvantage at all top valuation levels, bids more aggressively at every valuation. Conversely, the stronger bidder wins more frequently, generalizing Maskin and Riley (2000) to dependent private-value environments. When the stochastic asymmetry flips once, so that each bidder is stronger over a different range, the bid distributions cross once, with each bidder bidding more aggressively where their competitive disadvantage is most acute. In both environments, allocative inefficiency is an inherent feature of the equilibrium, driven by the stronger bidder's heightened incentives to shade bids relative to their valuation. The results translate to procurement auctions and wage competition between employers, and extend to interdependent-value auctions and the war of attrition under modified conditions. |
| Keywords: | asymmetric auctions; bid shading; first price auctions; dependent valuations |
| JEL: | D44 C72 D82 |
| Date: | 2026–10–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:103917 |
| By: | Lashkery, Shubh; Lukyanov, Georgy |
| Abstract: | An adviser who warns that a task is difficult may become harder to evaluate when her advice is followed more thoroughly. We study a long-lived adviser and successive short-lived workers who choose between standard and intensive implementation. Standard implementation reveals whether the warning was correct and gives the next worker an opportunity to acquire cost-saving practical knowledge. Intensive implementation protects the project but produces only occasional evidence about the adviser. We construct a stationary sequential equilibrium in which the adviser initially accepts an informative implementation, withholds the next project after her reputation improves, and resumes recommendations once inherited know-how has been lost. The interruption is chosen because it changes the successor’s implementation decision: preserving knowhow reverses the adviser’s preference at the relevant history. All realized evidence remains public. Weak subsequent evidence eventually ends the low-ability adviser’s protection, but this can take a long time. |
| Keywords: | reputation; career concerns; delegated implementation; organizational learning; knowledge transmission |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132294 |
| By: | Florian Brandl (University of Bonn); Wanying Huang (Monash University); Atulya Jain (University of Bonn) |
| Abstract: | We study whether a social planner can restore efficient learning, defined as a finite expected number of incorrect actions, in the canonical sequential social learning model. For each agent, the planner chooses what social information to disclose and what action-contingent transfer to offer. For unbounded signal distributions with regular tails, we show that whenever learning is inefficient without intervention, no combination of disclosure and transfers can restore efficiency with a finite budget. In particular, disclosure alone cannot restore efficiency. We identify agents' incentives as the key source of this impossibility. The budget requirement, however, concerns the transfers offered rather than the payments made. We show that even under full disclosure, the planner can achieve efficient learning using transfers while keeping expenditure arbitrarily small. Thus, the need for an unlimited budget does not entail large payments. |
| Keywords: | Social learning; information disclosure; efficient learning; transfers |
| JEL: | D83 D82 C73 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:433 |
| By: | Elshan Garashli (University of Graz, Austria) |
| Abstract: | Multiple experts often observe information that is nearly, but not exactly, common. We study a multi-sender cheap talk model with an ε-mixture prior that varies correlation while holding marginals fixed. Correlation determines which message profiles are governed by Bayes' rule. Full revelation can be supported at perfect correlation, but any independent component rules it out. This is not a collapse of communication. Informative equilibria still exist with almost common information and can be partitional or nonpartitional. With similar information, partitional equilibria survive only on a strict subset of their perfect-correlation bias region, while nonpartitional equilibria remain feasible throughout their perfect-correlation bias region. |
| Keywords: | Cheap talk, communication, information transmission, correlation, robustness |
| JEL: | C72 D82 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2026-22 |
| By: | Nemanja Antic; Harry Pei |
| Abstract: | We study steady-state equilibria of a sequential learning game in which each agent chooses between a safe action and a risky action of unknown profitability. Before choosing, each agent observes how many of the last $m$ agents adopted the risky action, but not whether they were informed or what their adoption costs were. We show that uninformed agents' imitation decisions can be strategic complements: the more likely uninformed agents are to join risky-action herds, the more informative those herds become about the action's profitability. When this complementarity gives rise to multiple equilibria, the one that maximizes the probability of imitation by uninformed agents also maximizes agents' welfare. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.25539 |
| By: | Lukyanov, Georgy; Zolotarev, Mikhail |
| Abstract: | Public support for early adoption can affect what later users learn from observed choices. An adopter may have favourable private information, or may have received a rebate. We study a government that randomly assigns eligibility for a fixed rebate and chooses the program’s coverage and reporting rule. We characterize when disclosing individual eligibility changes optimal coverage from zero to a positive rate under general convex program costs. This requires both a favourable marginal return to a disclosed program and a bound on the direct benefit available from a large opaque intervention. In the benchmark, disclosure allows the government to increase early adoption and welfare while leaving expected total adoption unchanged. We then allow imperfect compliance and private information for the late user. An eligibility label can be strictly informative without changing anyone’s decision, in which case disclosure has no welfare value. The policy reversal survives when both extensions are present. The results identify when an eligibility record is a useful part of the design of an adoption program. |
| Keywords: | social learning; adoption rebates; policy disclosure; early adoption; public program design |
| JEL: | D83 H23 D62 |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132288 |
| By: | Khachatryan, Rubik; Lukyanov, Georgy |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how learning about an incumbent affects the scope of entry when competitive responses use resources shared across markets. An entrant chooses whether to launch in neither, one, or both of two markets. Entry into the second market reduces the incumbent’s cost-reducing response in the first and can make one-market entry unattractive. The entrant learns about the incumbent’s capability from a record of its response to an earlier rival. More frequent publication encourages a less capable incumbent to imitate a more capable one. An observed response then becomes less informative, and entry after that record expands. We compare publication of conduct with a public audit of capability. For an open set of parameters with uniform setup costs, full publication maximizes total surplus within the specified policy class when publication costs are low. Removing the interaction between response costs across markets reverses this choice, while preserving all early and singleton-market payoffs. A capability audit is dominated in both economies. Expected entry scope is constant across the considered policies within each technology, although productive investment and the allocation of entry change. |
| Keywords: | reputation; entry scope; information disclosure; competitive response; multimarket competition |
| JEL: | D82 L13 L15 |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132292 |
| By: | Hexiao Liu; Lijian Lu; Mingzheng Wang |
| Abstract: | Digital marketplaces increasingly earn revenue from transaction commissions and seller-facing data services. Sellers may purchase data to increase revenue or avoid competing with an informed rival. We examine how consumer disclosure rights shape these motives and the platform's incentive to provide data. We develop a game-theoretic model of a commissioned platform, two differentiated sellers, and privacy-sensitive consumers. Data generates value through bilateral sales-revenue gains and competition threats arising from asymmetric access. Under mandatory collection, the platform can monetize defensive adoption, even when bilateral personalization reduces seller revenue. Under voluntary disclosure, anonymous purchasing and strictly positive privacy costs make unilateral disclosure unattractive in the baseline. Exclusive access thus yields no usable information, restores sellers' no-data rejection payoffs, and eliminates defensive fees. Profitable provision therefore requires nonnegative bilateral revenue gains. Under full fee extraction, sellers retain their no-data net profits. This revenue alignment does not guarantee welfare gains: additional transactions may benefit consumers, whereas segmentation in an already covered market can raise anonymous prices and reduce welfare. Capping anonymous offers at their no-data benchmark protects individual consumers and limits positive-mass provision to the transaction-creation region. Extensions consider access choice, heterogeneous privacy costs, imperfect identification, and limited contractual credibility. Platforms should evaluate data services based on both bilateral-use and seller-rejection outcomes, and sellers should distinguish revenue-enhancing from defensive investments. Regulators should distinguish equal-access rules from effective consumer control and monitor pricing in anonymous channels. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.22864 |
| By: | Hattori, Keisuke |
| Abstract: | Highly productive leaders can directly raise team output, but excessive involvement may hinder collaboration among team members. We study two leadership styles. Under Leading by Contribution, in which the leader commits to her own effort before members act, preserving peer collaboration may require productive restraint: she deliberately limits her own productive effort. Under Leading by Backup, in which the leader can step in after members act, preserving peer collaboration may require strategic absence: she commits to being unavailable as a backup with positive probability. Sufficiently able leaders prefer greater productive involvement without peer collaboration. Therefore, a small increase in ability can trigger greater productive involvement and a discrete drop in team output. The model also shows why performance-based appointment may select a more productive leader who nevertheless generates lower team output. |
| Keywords: | Leadership, Peer collaboration, Team production, Productive restraint, Strategic absence |
| JEL: | D23 L23 M12 M51 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:344080 |
| By: | Huseyin Yildirim |
| Abstract: | A principal designs ratings for multiple career-concerned agents with correlated talents, mapping outputs into arbitrary finite-variance statistics. Peer output both benchmarks effort and signals talent, making full disclosure suboptimal under confidential ratings. Relaxing Bayes plausibility to linear orthogonality yields a closed-form rating and computable effort bounds for general priors; under normality, the relaxation is exact. Optimal confidential ratings combine the full-disclosure wage with the Fisher score for effort: they are relative-performance when individual output is informative about talent and team-based when it is noisy. Public ratings must satisfy joint Bayes plausibility, weakening incentives; hence, the principal prefers confidential ratings, whereas agents prefer public ratings. A spectral decomposition characterizes public ratings under normality: small cost heterogeneity implies full disclosure regardless of the noise structure, whereas large cost heterogeneity or strong effort spillovers can induce partial disclosure to reallocate incentives. The results bear on performance ratings and pay transparency. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.24819 |
| By: | Lukyanov, Georgy; Ogorodnikov, Nikita |
| Abstract: | New information services begin without a record that teaches customers how to interpret them. We study a two-period monopoly selling standardized forecasts whose committed scoring technology combines noisy evidence with a persistent, initially unknown calibration. More evidence improves a forecast’s current decision value but makes the source’s calibration harder to learn. The first forecast is released publicly only after its immediate use expires, so it builds a common decoder for the next forecast. For an arbitrary stakes distribution, monopoly pricing uses the same static cutoff in both periods. Provider patience lowers initial evidence intensity; with identical technologies and a binary format menu, transparent conditions generate an endogenous low-evidence first forecast followed by a high-evidence second forecast. A constrained planner switches later because monopoly undercaptures the return to costly evidence. A calibration audit eliminates the accuracy–interpretability trade-off, but the provider may not adopt it even when adoption is socially valuable. The mechanism requires neither distorted reporting nor confirmation preferences: the strategic choice is the auditable evidence input to a mechanically generated score. |
| Keywords: | information provision; forecasting services; source learning; evidence quality; dynamic pricing; calibration audits |
| JEL: | D82 D83 L12 L15 |
| Date: | 2026–10–16 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:132290 |
| By: | Elshan Garashli (University of Graz, Austria) |
| Abstract: | Decision makers rely on experts who observe part of the information relevant to a choice. We study communication when an expert observes one component of a decision target but her observation also predicts a missing component. This indirect information can sustain communication despite conflicts of interest. The largest conflict consistent with informative communication depends on what extreme observations imply about the missing component, not on correlation alone. When this prediction is linear, higher correlation permits finer communication and raises the value of listening relative to no information. Yet this need not improve welfare because the decision itself becomes more difficult. |
| Keywords: | strategic communication, partial expertise, correlated information, price benchmarks |
| JEL: | C72 D82 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grz:wpaper:2026-23 |
| By: | Sarah Auster (University of Bonn, Department of Economics & CEPR); Yeon-Koo Che (Department of Economics & Columbia University) |
| Abstract: | This paper revisits the classic Pandora’s box problem, studying a decision-maker (DM) who seeks to minimize her maximal ex-post regret. The DM decides how many options to explore and in what order, before choosing one or taking an outside option. Wecharacterize the regret-minimizing search rule and show that the likelihood of opting out often increases as more options become available for exploration. We show that this “choice overload” is driven by the DM’s fear of selection error—the regret from searching the wrong options—suggesting that steering choice via recommendations or cost heterogeneity can mitigate regret and encourage search. |
| Keywords: | Sequential Search, Minmax Regret, Choice Overload |
| JEL: | D81 D83 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:434 |
| By: | Xiaoming Cai; Pieter A. Gautier |
| Abstract: | How does buyers’ search for bundles generate sorting among heterogeneous sellers? We study competitive search in which buyers assemble bundles through separate transactions, where prices direct search and determine congestion. With two seller types, buyers choose only same-type bundles below a single threshold in cross-type value and cross-type bundles above it. The threshold lies strictly between geometric and arithmetic means of same-type values, so search produces cross-type matching even when types are complements. With a continuum of types, log-supermodularity and submodularity yield unique stable equilibria with positive and negative assortative matching. Positive sorting extends to any fixed number of visits. |
| Keywords: | competitive search, search for bundles, assortative matching, seller heterogeneity |
| JEL: | C78 D83 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13058 |
| By: | Caroline Ventura (CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) |
| Abstract: | Two finite sets of priors can share a convex hull while differing in resolution. Maximin expected utility treats them as equivalent. We axiomatize Variational Information-Structure (VIS) preferences over acts paired with finite prior sets, for which the convex hull is not a sufficient informational state variable. Value equals the maximin value over the convex core minus the product of the act's ambiguity exposure and a coefficient that depends on the core and on granularity, the Hausdorff distance between the prior set and its core. Under structural richness and a resolution Archimedean axiom, the coefficient vanishes as granularity approaches zero along granularities attainable at a fixed core. Differences in resolution can reverse the maximin ordering induced by core inclusion, and we characterize when the representation satisfies statewise monotonicity.Supports with the same core and the same granularity are behaviorally equivalent, which distinguishes the model from α-maximin with a structure-specific pessimism index. |
| Keywords: | Multiple priors, Insurance, Ellsberg paradox, Belief functions, Resolution, Granularity, Ambiguity |
| Date: | 2026–10–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:cesptp:hal-05795703 |
| By: | Bühler, Benno; Fischer, Dominik; Ganglmair, Bernhard |
| Abstract: | We develop a licensing-litigation model to analyze how different injunction frameworks affect bargaining behavior, equilibrium royalties, and litigation outcomes in standard-essential patent (SEP) disputes. Motivated by recent developments in German case law, we compare two legal frameworks that differ only in whether the patent holder's licensing offer conditions the availability of injunctive relief. We show that removing the patent holder's offer from the injunction analysis raises equilibrium royalties and the risk of patent hold-up when courts are sufficiently imprecise in assessing FRAND compliance; when courts are predictable, the two frameworks coincide. Higher royalties arise because SEP holders make more aggressive, non-FRAND, licensing offers, while implementers respond with higher counteroffers to reduce the risk of an injunction. The same mechanism, however, can reduce the incidence of injunctions, so injunction frequency is an imperfect measure of hold-up. Whether the higher royalties raise or lower welfare depends on where the socially optimal royalty lies relative to the rates the two frameworks produce. |
| Keywords: | bargaining, FRAND, hold-up, injunction, legal uncertainty, licensing negotiations, litigation, standard-essential patents (SEP) |
| JEL: | C78 K21 K41 L24 O31 O34 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:344104 |
| By: | Gustavo Berganti\~nos; Juan D. Moreno-Ternero |
| Abstract: | We explore the implications of the principle of monotonicity in the problem of sharing the revenues raised from subscriptions to music streaming platforms among content providers. We formalize various forms of this principle as several axioms for popularity indices, which generate sharing rules in this setting. We show that, combined with some other basic axioms (such as additivity, symmetry, or pairwise homogeneity), they provide axiomatic characterizations of focal indices for this problem, as well as more general families comprising them. |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2610.25167 |
| By: | Jacob Goldin (The University of Chicago; University of Chicago Law School; NBER); David Weisbach (The University of Chicago) |
| Abstract: | Line drawing is a pervasive feature of legal systems. Across many domains, the applicable legal treatment turns on whether an activity falls above or below some threshold. We characterize the economic forces that determine the optimal placement of such thresholds, both generally and in specific legal settings involving monetary and non-monetary sanctions, prohibitions, and mandates. We apply our results to two important line-drawing questions in private law: the optimal due-care threshold for negligence liability and the optimal threshold for whether a shortfall in contract performance constitutes breach. In both applications, the optimal line takes the form of a population-level marginal cost-benefit rule, with the relevant costs and benefits weighted over the actors whose behavior the line induces to change. |
| JEL: | H0 K1 K12 K13 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2026-128 |
| By: | Takanori ADACHI |
| Abstract: | We examine per-unit cost pass-through in a two-type screening model of monopolistic nonlinear pricing. We show that per-unit pass-through for the small package is necessarily positive when the low type’s participation constraint binds. Under isoelastic preferences, pass-through is higher for the small package than for the large package. This ranking, however, is not a general implication of screening. We derive a local curvature condition governing the pass-through gap and show that shifted-isoelastic preferences can reverse the ranking. A numerical illustration demonstrates that such reversals can also occur away from the local limit. Thus, screening restricts the sign of per-unit pass-through at the bottom of the menu, but not its ranking across contracts. |
| Keywords: | Pass-through; Nonlinear pricing; Screening. |
| JEL: | D42 D82 H22 L11 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kue:epaper:e-26-004 |