RAND Journal of Economics articles

Recent articles from RAND Journal of Economics

Price discrimination in input markets.
March 22, 2009... We analyze the short- and long-run implications of third-degree price discrimination in input markets. In contrast to the extant literature, which typically assumes that the supplier is an unconstrained monopolist, in our model input prices are constrained by the threat of demand-side...

An empirical investigation of the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination.
March 22, 2009... Economic theory does not provide sharp predictions on the welfare effects of banning wholesale price discrimination: if downstream cost differences exist, then discrimination shifts production inefficiently, toward high-cost retailers, so a ban increases welfare; if differences in price...

Managerial hedging, equity ownership, and firm value.
March 22, 2009... Suppose risk-averse managers can hedge the aggregate component of their exposure to firm's cash-flow risk by trading in financial markets but cannot hedge their firm-specific exposure. This gives them incentives to pass up firm-specific projects in favor of standard projects that contain...

Market participation in delegated and intrinsic common-agency games.
March 22, 2009... We study how competition in nonlinear pricing between two principals (sellers) affects' market participation by a privately informed agent (consumer). When participation is restricted to all or nothing ("intrinsic" agency), the agent must choose between both principals' contracts and...

Efficient tournaments within teams.
March 22, 2009... We analyze incentive problems in team and partnership structures where the only available information to condition a contract on is a partial and noisy ranking which specifies who comes first in efforts among the competing partners. This enables us to ensure both first-best efficient effort...