Wilfried Sand-Zantman

Public and Private Investments in Regulated Network Industries: Coordination and Competition Issues

This paper analyzes the relationship between a national regulator, an incumbent and a local government in a context where investment in a new network has to be undertaken. In the light of the recent debates on the competition between private firms and local governments, we analyze the limits to be put on the local public intervention in these markets. We show that banning local government intervention can be welfare-enhancing either in the presence inter-districts externality or with asymmetric information or in case of conflicting objectives between the regulator and local governments.

Citizen Candidacy With Asymmetric Information

We extend a simple version of the citizen candidacy model (developed by Osborne-Slivinski (1996) and Besley-Coate (1997)) to an asymmetric information setting, in which the type of a given individual is assumed to be private information. Focusing on a particular class of perfect Bayesian equilibria, we show that there exist only two kinds of equilibria. In the first one, both non-median types become candidates and those equilibria generalize to any number of (potential) candidates. In the second one, only one of the non-median types chooses to become candidates for the election and those equilibria hold for a number of (potential) candidates at most equal to 3. This is in sharp contrast with the complete information framework in which only the median type individuals stand for office when the entry cost is sufficiently low.

An Offer You Can't Refuse: Early Contracting with Endogenous Threat

We analyze early contracting when a seller has private information on the future gains from trade and the buyer can bypass. Despite ex-post trade occurring under complete information and being efficient, early negotiation with an informed seller allows the uninformed buyer to improve her bargaining position. We show that the buyer can divide sellers types so that bypass becomes a credible threat. While some sellers accept because they gain more than by trading ex-post, others accept only because they fear that rejection would reveal too much information. Equilibrium payoffs are characterized and are shown to have a close connection with ratifiable equilibrium payoffs.

Dynamic Cooperation in Local Public Goods Supply with Imperfect Monitoring

This paper develops a two-country model where each country invests in a local public good generating positive cross-countries externalities. In a repeated game setting where the level of public good depends on a non-observable effort by each country plus a random shock, we characterize the existence condition of a cut-off trigger strategy equilibrium inducing full cooperation. Moreover, we show that introducing a small positive correlation between the two country-specific shocks gives rise to a manipulation of information thereby restricting the prospects of cooperation.

Contracting and the Disclosure of Ideas in the Innovation Process

We analyze contracting between an innovator endowed with an idea and a project developer. The innovator has private information about the value of his idea, whereas the developer must exert some non-verifiable effort at the development stage. The developer may also threaten to leave the relationship after being informed on the value of the idea. The equilibrium contracts distort downwards the developers incentives, but differently so depending on the strength of intellectual property rights (IPR). In particular, with intermediate IPR, only pooling contracts arise, with a limited amount of information being revealed at equilibrium.