John Wooders

Noncooperative versus cooperative R&D with endogenous spillover rates

This paper deals with a general version of a two-stage model of R&D and product market competition. We provide a thorough generalization of previous results on the comparative performance of noncooperative and cooperative R&D, dispensing in particular with ex-post firm symmetry and linear demand assumptions. We also characterize the structure of profit-maximizing R&D cartels where firms competing in a product market jointly decide R&D expenditure, as well as internal spillover, levels. We establish the firms would essentially always prefer extremal spillovers, and within the context of a standard specification, derive conditions for the optimality of minimal spillover.

One-way spillovers, endogenous innovator/imitator roles and research joint ventures

We consider a two-period duopoly characterized by a one-way spillover structure in process R&D and a very broad specification of product market competition. We show that a priori identical firms always engage in different levels of R&D, at equilibrium, thus giving rise to an innovator/imitator configuration and ending up with different sizes. We also provide a general analysis of the social benefits of, and firms’ incentive for, forming research joint ventures. The key properties of the game are submodularity (R&D decisions are strategic substitutes) and lack of global concavity.

Auctions with a buy price

AbstracteBay and Yahoo allow sellers to list their auctions with a buy price at which a bidder may purchase the item immediately. On eBay, the buy-now option disappears once a bid is placed, while on Yahoo the buy-now option remains in effect throughout the auction. We show that when bidders are risk averse, both types of auctions raise seller revenue for a wide range of buy prices. The Yahoo format raises more revenue than the eBay format when bidders have either CARA or DARA. Bidders with DARA prefer the eBay auction, while bidders with CARA are indifferent between the two.

Cooperation vs. Competition in R&D: the Role of Stability of Equilibrium

We consider a model in which firms first choose process R&D expenditures and then compete in an output market. We show the symmetric equilibrium under R&D competition is sometimes unstable, in which case two asymmetric equilibria must also exist. For the latter, we find, in contrast to the literature that total profits are sometimes higher with R&D competition than with research joint venture cartelization (due to the cost asymmetry of the resulting duopoly in the noncooperative case). Furthermore, these equilibria provide another instance of R&D-induced firm heterogeneity.

Does Experience Teach? Professionals and Minimax Play in the Lab

Does expertise in strategic behavior obtained in the field transfer to the abstract setting of the laboratory? Palacios-Huerta and Volij (2008) argued that the behavior of professional soccer players in mixed-strategy games conforms closely to minimax play, while the behavior of students (who are presumably novices in strategic situations requiring unpredictability) does not. We reexamine their data, showing that the play of professionals is inconsistent with the minimax hypothesis in several respects: (i) professionals follow nonstationary mixtures, with action frequencies that are negatively correlated between the first and the second half of the experiment, (ii) professionals tend to switch between under- and overplaying an action relative to its equilibrium frequency, and (iii) the distribution of action frequencies across professionals is far from the distribution implied by minimax. In each respect, the behavior of students conforms more closely to the minimax hypothesis. Copyright 2010 The Econometric Society.

Prices, Delay, and the Dynamics of Trade☆

We characterize the dynamics of trading patterns and market composition when trade is bilateral, finding a trading partner is costly, prices are determined by bargaining, and preferences are private information. We show that equilibrium is inefficient and exhibits delay as sellers price discriminate between buyers with different values. As frictions vanish, transaction prices are asymptotically competitive and the welfare loss of inefficient trading approaches zero, even though the trading patterns continue to be inefficient and delay persists.

Decentralized trade mitigates the lemons problem

In markets with adverse selection, only low-quality units trade in the competitive equilibrium when the average quality of the good held by sellers is low. Under decentralized trade, however, both high and lowquality units trade, although with delay. Moreover, when frictions are small the surplus realized is greater than the (static) competitive surplus. Thus, decentralized trade mitigates the lemons problem. Remarkably, payoffs are competitive as frictions vanish, even though both high and low-quality units continue to trade and there is trade at several prices.

Hard and Soft Closes: A Field Experiment on Auction Closing Rules

Late bidding in online auctions has attracted substantial theoretical and empirical attention. This paper reports the results of a controlled field experiment on late bidding behavior. Pairs of

Dynamic Markets for Lemons: Performance, Liquidity, and Policy Intervention

50 gift certificates were auctioned simultaneously on Yahoo! Auctions, using a randomized paired comparison design. Yahoo? site allows sellers to specify whether they wish to use a hard or soft close, and this enabled us to run one auction in each pair with a soft close, and the other with a hard close. An advantage to our randomized paired design is that differences in numbers of bidders, numbers of simultaneously occurring auctions and other sources of noise in bidding behavior are substantially controlled when drawing inferences with respect to treatment effects. We find that auctions with soft-closes yield economically and statistically significantly higher mean seller revenue than hard-close auctions, and that the difference is due to those cases where the soft-close auction is extended.

Walrasian equilibrium in matching models

We study non-stationary dynamic decentralized markets with adverse selection in which trade is bilateral and prices are determined by bargaining. Examples include labor markets, housing markets, and markets for …nancial assets. We characterize equilibrium, and identify the dynamics of transaction prices, trading patterns, and the average quality in the market. When the horizon is …nite, the surplus in the unique equilibrium exceeds the competitive surplus; as traders become perfectly patient the market becomes completely illiquid at all but the …rst and last dates, but the surplus remains above the competitive surplus. When the horizon is in…nite, the surplus realized equals the static competitive surplus. Subsidizing low quality or taxing high quality raises the surplus.