Publications by PSE researchers

Firms receiving independent signals on a common‐value risky project compete to be the first to invest. When firms are symmetric and competition is winner‐take‐all, rents are fully dissipated in equilibrium and the extent to which signals are publicly disclosed is irrelevant for welfare. When disclosure of signals is asymmetric, welfare is highest when firms are most asymmetric, and policies that uniformly promote disclosure may backfire, especially when competition is severe. When firms strategically select their disclosure policies, a moderate subsidy for disclosure induces a low correlation between firms' policies, and thus maximizes welfare.

We review the literature on the academic publishing sector with a particular focus on the questions raised by open access. Dwelling on insights from the literatures on two-sided markets and certification, we discuss the various options to promote open access as well as possible policies to regulate the publishing market.

We review the literature on the academic publishing sector with a particular focus on the questions raised by open access. Dwelling on insights from the literatures on two-sided markets and certification, we discuss the various options to promote open access as well as possible policies to regulate the publishing market.

Two players receiving independent signals on a risky project with common value compete to be the first to invest. We characterize the equilibrium of this preemption game as the publicity of signals varies. Private signals create a winner's curse: the first mover suspects that his rival might have privately received adverse information, hence exited. To compensate, players seek more evidence supporting the project, resulting in later investment. A conservative planner concerned with avoiding unprofitable investments may then prefer private signals. Our results suggest that policy interventions should primarily tackle winner-takes-all competition, and regulate transparency only once competition is sufficiently mild.

This paper explores how insurance companies can coordinate to extend their joint capacity for the coverage of new and undiversifiable risks. The undiversifiable nature of such risks causes a shortage of insurance capacity and their limited knowledge makes learning and information sharing necessary. We develop a unified theoretical model to analyse co-insurance agreements. We show that organizing this insurance supply amounts to sharing a common value divisible good between capacity constrained and privately informed insurers with a reserve price. Coinsurance via the creation of an insurance pool turns out to operate as a uniform price auction with an “exit/re-entry” option. We compare it to a discriminatory auction for which no specific agreements are needed. Both auction formats lead to different coverage/premium tradeoffs. If at least one insurer provides an optimistic expertise about the risk, the pool offers higher coverage. This result is reversed when all insurers are pessimistic about the risk. Static comparative results with respect to the severity of the capacity constraints and the reserve price are provided. In the case of completely new risks, a regulator aiming at maximizing the expected coverage should promote the pool when the reserve price is low enough or when competition is high enough.

Cette note étudie comment un choc de demande exogène, tel que des aides publiques, influence le potentiel d’exclusion contenu dans les effets d’apprentissage. Nous construisons un modèle de duopole à deux périodes dans lequel l’accroissement de production par une entreprise à la première période fait baisser son coût marginal de production à la seconde. Nous étudions ensuite un premier scénario dans lequel la demande et le processus d’apprentissage sont linéaires pour montrer qu’un choc positif de demande amplifie l’effet d’exclusion de l’apprentissage si et seulement si les entreprises sont suffisamment asymétriques en termes de capacités d’apprentissage. Dans un second scénario, les entreprises sont infiniment impatientes, ce qui permet de mettre en lumière le rôle clé joué par la courbure de la fonction de demande dans le potentiel d’exclusion des effets d’apprentissage à la suite d’un choc de demande.

The present paper models the relationship between a research unit wishing to launch a new project and a biobank capable of supplying the necessary biological resources (biological samples and associated data). Although the project’s aim may be to produce an innovative product or process, such as a new drug or treatment protocol, whether it will be a success is uncertain. Neither the biobank nor the research unit can know a project’s commercial value in advance, but this value is endogenous, that is, it depends on the actions and decisions of the actors involved. Our objective was to ascertain how these actions and decisions affect the project’s value.