Within the private-values paradigm, we construct a tractable empirical model of equilibrium behaviour at first-price auctions when bidders’ valuations are potentially dependent, but not necessarily affiliated. We develop a test of affiliation and apply our framework to data from low-price, sealed-bid auctions held by the Department of Transportation in the State of Michigan to procure road-resu...

This paper proposes a consistent approach to discrete time valuation in insurance and finance. This approach uses the growth optimal portfolio as reference unit or benchmark. When used as benchmark, it is shown that all benchmarked price processes are supermartingales. Benchmarked fair price processes are characterized as martingales. No measure transformation is needed for the fair pricing of ...

The present paper accomplishes a major step towards a reconciliation of two conflicting approaches in mathematical finance: on the one hand, the mainstream approach based on the notion of no arbitrage (Black, Merton & Scholes); and on the other hand, the consideration of non-semimartingale price processes, the archetype of which being fractional Brownian motion (Mandelbrot). Imposing (arbitrari...

The seminal work of Engel (1999) establishes a method for measuring the contributions of traded goods and nontraded goods to the fluctuation of real exchange rates. Two difficulties arise: the assumed price aggregation is likely biased, and the needed data on non-traded goods price is often limited. The present work overcomes these difficulties, as follows. First we generalize Engel’s exchange ...

We characterize the optimal dynamic price policy of a monopolist who faces “viscous” demand for its services. Demand is viscous if it adjusts relatively slowly to price changes. We show that with the optimal policy the monopolist stops short of achieving 100% market penetration, even when all of the consumers have the same long-run willingness to pay for the service. Furthermore, for certain pa...

Unexpected variation in emissions can have a substantial impact on the prices and efficiency of tradable emission permit markets. In this paper we report results from a laboratory experiment in which subjects participate in an emissions trading market in the presence of emissions uncertainty. Subjects face exogenous, random positive or negative shocks to their emission levels after they make pr...

This paper presents a model in which a firm attempts to gain market power by pricing above the competitive market price and simply trying to persuade illinformed consumers not to search for other lower priced firms. Fictitious price comparisons, or false sale signs could be used in this way to deceptively and profitably deter consumer search. A simplified model shows how this mechanism could ex...

The increasing hazard rate (IHR) property of distributions of asymmetric information parameters play a critical role in characterizing a separating Perfect Bayesian–Nash Equilibria in screening problems. This paper studies sufficient conditions on these distributions for IHR to be preserved under convolution. When different sources of asymmetric information aggregate into a single scalar, these...

e xchange rate is an important factor influencing price indices of exported goods of a country in different ways. imported intermediate commodity is one of the important ways by which the change in exchange rate affects price indices of the exported goods. using the input-output table of iran for the year 2001, this paper investigates the impact of exchange rate devaluation on price indices of ...