Suchergebnisse

AbstractIn the informed principal model with common values, I provide conditions that allow for the characterization of the set of equilibria of the game in which the principal makes a take‐it‐or‐leave‐it offer of a mechanism to the agent. I further examine if and when restriction to direct revelation mechanisms is without loss of generality. Last, I provide clear guidelines for solving economic applications, such as insurance, procurement, security design, and bilateral trading, of the informed principal model. The results are compared with and shown to significantly differ from those obtained in Maskin and Tirole (1992).

This paper studies general health insurance markets. It proposes an ex post risk adjustment scheme that discourages risk selection and promotes efficient competition. Under the proposed risk adjustment scheme, the regulator engages in transfers that are conditional on the ex post profits of insurers. The risk adjustment scheme is entirely budget balanced, as it does not call for government subsidies, and requires the regulator to hold minimal information to implement it. Equilibrium is shown to exist and be efficient in any environment with a finite number of types and states even if single-crossing is not satisfied.

I study optimal redistributive taxation in credit markets with adverse selection. Under symmetric information, the tax system is non-distortionary and unambiguously benefits high-risk types at the expense of low-risk types. Under asymmetric information, a range of taxes exists that creates Pareto improvements relative to the (zero-tax) market allocation by increasing aggregate investment. For sufficiently high taxes, an increase in the safe interest rate can be accompanied by an increase in investment.

This paper studies general health insurance markets. It proposes an ex post risk adjustment scheme that discourages risk selection and promotes efficient competition. Under the proposed risk adjustment scheme, the regulator engages in transfers that are conditional on the ex post profits of insurers. The risk adjustment scheme is entirely budget balanced, as it does not call for government subsidies, and requires the regulator to hold minimal information to implement it. Equilibrium is shown to exist and be efficient in any environment with a finite number of types and states even if single-crossing is not satisfied.

I study optimal redistributive taxation in credit markets with adverse selection. Under symmetric information, the tax system is non-distortionary and unambiguously benefits high-risk types at the expense of low-risk types. Under asymmetric information, a range of taxes exists that creates Pareto improvements relative to the (zero-tax) market allocation by increasing aggregate investment. For sufficiently high taxes, an increase in the safe interest rate can be accompanied by an increase in investment.

I study a credit market with adverse selection as a signalling game. I show that in the least-costly separating equilibrium, entrepreneurs of high-quality projects may over-or under-invest compared to the social optimum to signal their type. I then examine a simple budget-balanced tax-subsidy scheme applied by the government. At a first sight, the tax-subsidy scheme seems to benefit entrepreneurs of low-quality projects and harm entrepreneurs of high-quality projects because the former are cross-subsidised by the latter. Nonetheless, this result does not necessarily hold if entrepreneurs can pledge the subsidy as collateral. In that case, taxes can improve social welfare by either decreasing or increasing aggregate investment depending on whether entrepreneurs of high-quality projects over-or under-invest in equilibrium.