IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inu/caeprp/2007025.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Endogenous Mechanisms and Nash Equilibrium in Competitive Contracting

Author

Listed:
  • Frank H. Page, Jr.

    (Indiana University Bloomington)

  • Paulo K. Monteiro

    (EPGE/FGV)

Abstract

We model strategic competition in a market with asymmetric information as a noncooperative game in which each firm competes for the business of a buyer of unknown type by offering the buyer a catalog of products and prices. The timing in our model is Stackelberg: in the first stage, given the distribution of buyer types known to all firms and the deducible, type-dependent best responses of the agent, firms simultaneously and noncooperatively choose their catalog offers. In the second stage the buyer, knowing his type, chooses a single firm and product-price pair from that firm's catalog. By backward induction, this Stackelberg game with asymmetric information reduces to a game over catalogs with payoff indeterminacies. In particular, due to ties within catalogs and/or across catalogs, corresponding to any catalog profile offered by firms there may be multiple possible expected firm payoffs, all consistent with the rational optimizing behavior of the agent for each of his types. The resolution of these indeterminacies depends on the tie-breaking mechanism which emerges in the market. Because each tie-breaking mechanism induces a particular game over catalogs, a reasonable candidate would be a tie-breaking mechanism which supports a Nash equilibrium in the corresponding catalog game. We call such a mechanism an endogenous Nash mechanism. The fundamental question we address in this paper is, does there exist an endogenous Nash mechanism - and therefore, does there exist a Nash equilibrium for the catalog game? We show under fairly mild conditions on primitives that catalog games naturally possess tie-breaking mechanisms which support Nash equilibria.

Suggested Citation

  • Frank H. Page, Jr. & Paulo K. Monteiro, 2007. "Endogenous Mechanisms and Nash Equilibrium in Competitive Contracting," CAEPR Working Papers 2007-025, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    • Handle: RePEc:inu:caeprp:2007025
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://caepr.indiana.edu/RePEc/inu/caeprp/caepr2007-025.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peters, Michael, 2001. "Common Agency and the Revelation Principle," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(5), pages 1349-1372, September.
    2. Page, Frank Jr. & Monteiro, Paulo K., 2003. "Three principles of competitive nonlinear pricing," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1-2), pages 63-109, February.
    3. Leo K. Simon, 1987. "Games with Discontinuous Payoffs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(4), pages 569-597.
    4. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2006. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521692083.
    5. Mertens, J.-F., 1987. "A measurable “measurable choice” theorem," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1987049, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Carmona, Guilherme & Fajardo, José, 2009. "Existence of equilibrium in common agency games with adverse selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 749-760, July.
    7. Simon, Leo K & Zame, William R, 1990. "Discontinuous Games and Endogenous Sharing Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 861-872, July.
    8. David Martimort & Lars Stole, 2002. "The Revelation and Delegation Principles in Common Agency Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1659-1673, July.
    9. Philip J. Reny, 1999. "On the Existence of Pure and Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(5), pages 1029-1056, September.
    10. Blundell,Richard & Newey,Whitney K. & Persson,Torsten (ed.), 2006. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521871525.
    11. Matthew O. Jackson & Leo K. Simon & Jeroen M. Swinkels & William R. Zame, 2002. "Communication and Equilibrium in Discontinuous Games of Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1711-1740, September.
    12. Paulo Monteiro & Frank Page, 2008. "Catalog competition and Nash equilibrium in nonlinear pricing games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(3), pages 503-524, March.
    13. Artstein, Zvi, 1979. "A note on fatou's lemma in several dimensions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 277-282, December.
    14. Monteiro, Paulo Klinger & Page Jr, Frank H., 2007. "Uniform payoff security and Nash equilibrium in compact games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 566-575, May.
    15. Page, Frank H, Jr, 1992. "Mechanism Design for General Screening Problems with Moral Hazard," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(2), pages 265-281, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Braido, Luis H.B., 2009. "Multiproduct price competition with heterogeneous consumers and nonconvex costs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(9-10), pages 526-534, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Monteiro, Paulo K. & Page Jr., Frank H., 2009. "Endogenous mechanisms and Nash equilibrium in competitive contracting games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(9-10), pages 664-678, September.
    2. Carmona, Guilherme & Fajardo, José, 2009. "Existence of equilibrium in common agency games with adverse selection," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 749-760, July.
    3. Allison, Blake A. & Bagh, Adib & Lepore, Jason J., 2022. "Invariant equilibria and classes of equivalent games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 448-462.
    4. Philip J. Reny, 2020. "Nash Equilibrium in Discontinuous Games," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 439-470, August.
    5. Attar, Andrea & Mariotti, Thomas & Salanié, François, 2021. "Competitive Nonlinear Pricing under Adverse Selection," TSE Working Papers 21-1201, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2022.
    6. Graham Mallard, 2014. "Static Common Agency And Political Influence: An Evaluative Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 17-35, February.
    7. Ulrich Horst & Santiago Moreno-Bromberg, 2010. "Efficiency and Equilibria in Games of Optimal Derivative Design," SFB 649 Discussion Papers SFB649DP2010-035, Sonderforschungsbereich 649, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
    8. Martimort, David & Stole, Lars, 2012. "Representing equilibrium aggregates in aggregate games with applications to common agency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 753-772.
    9. He, Wei & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2015. "Discontinuous games with asymmetric information: An extension of Reny's existence theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 26-35.
    10. Galperti, Simone, 2015. "Common agency with informed principals: Menus and signals," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 648-667.
    11. repec:inu:caeprp:2012-008 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Yu Chen & Zhenhua Wu, 2012. "Delegation Principle for Multi-agency Games under Ex Post Equilibrium," CAEPR Working Papers 2012-008, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    13. Prokopovych, Pavlo & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2014. "On the existence of mixed strategy Nash equilibria," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 87-97.
    14. Rabia Nessah, 2022. "Weakly continuous security and nash equilibrium," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 725-745, November.
    15. Rabia Nessah, 2013. "Weakly Continuous Security in Discontinuous and Nonquasiconcave Games: Existence and Characterization," Working Papers 2013-ECO-20, IESEG School of Management.
    16. Zhiwei Liu & Nicholas C. Yannelis, 2013. "On Discontinuous Games with Asymmetric Information," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1318, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    17. Rabia Nessah & Guoqiang Tian, 2008. "The Existence of Equilibria in Discontinuous and Nonconvex Games," Working Papers 2008-ECO-14, IESEG School of Management, revised Mar 2010.
    18. Gwenaël Piaser, 2014. "Common Agency Games with Common Value Exclusion, Convexity and Existence," Working Papers 2014-420, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    19. Tian, Guoqiang, 2015. "On the existence of equilibria in games with arbitrary strategy spaces and preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 9-16.
    20. Frédéric Koessler & Marie Laclau & Tristan Tomala, 2022. "Interactive Information Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 153-175, February.
    21. Bettina Klose & Dan Kovenock, 2015. "The all-pay auction with complete information and identity-dependent externalities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(1), pages 1-19, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    common agency with adverse selection; endogenous contracting mechanisms; discontinuous games; catalog games; existence of Nash equilibrium; competitive contracting;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C6 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inu:caeprp:2007025. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/caeprus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.