IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pen/papers/03-014.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sunk Investments Lead to Unpredictable Prices

Author

Listed:
  • George Mailath

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

  • Andrew Postlewaite

    (Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania)

  • Larry Samuelson

    (Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Abstract

We study transactions that require investments before trading in a competitive market, when forward contracts fixing the transaction price are absent. We show that, despite the market being perfectly competitive and subject to arbitrarily little uncertainty, the inability to jointly determine investment levels and prices may make it impossible for buyers and sellers to predict the prices at which they will trade, leading to inefficient levels of investment and trade.

Suggested Citation

  • George Mailath & Andrew Postlewaite & Larry Samuelson, 2003. "Sunk Investments Lead to Unpredictable Prices," PIER Working Paper Archive 03-014, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    • Handle: RePEc:pen:papers:03-014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://economics.sas.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/filevault/working-papers/03-014.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cole, Harold L. & Mailath, George J. & Postlewaite, Andrew, 2001. "Efficient Non-Contractible Investments in Large Economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 333-373, December.
    2. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2002. "Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 583-601, March.
    3. Manuelli, Rodolfo & Peck, James, 1992. "Sunspot-like effects of random endowments," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 193-206, April.
    4. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    5. Shiller, Robert J & Weiss, Allan N, 1999. "Home Equity Insurance," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 21-47, July.
    6. Franklin Allen & Douglas Gale, 2003. "Financial Fragility, Liquidity and Asset Prices," Center for Financial Institutions Working Papers 01-37, Wharton School Center for Financial Institutions, University of Pennsylvania.
    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. Jones, Luke R. & Vossler, Christian A., 2014. "Experimental tests of water quality trading markets," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 68(3), pages 449-462.

    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. George J.Mailath & Andrew Postlewaite & Larry Samuelson, 2003. "Sunk Investments Lead to Unpredictable Prices (Second Version)," PIER Working Paper Archive 04-007, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 30 Jan 2004.
    2. Bester, Helmut, 2013. "Investments and the holdup problem in a matching market," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 302-311.
    3. Leonardo Felli & Kevin Roberts, 2016. "Does Competition Solve the Hold-up Problem?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(329), pages 172-200, January.
    4. Tomoeda, Kentaro, 2019. "Efficient investments in the implementation problem," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 182(C), pages 247-278.
    5. Robert Gibbons & John Roberts, 2012. "The Handbook of Organizational Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 9889.
    6. James M. Malcomson, 2012. "Relational Incentive Contracts [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    7. Matthew J. Baker & Joyce P. Jacobsen, 2007. "Marriage, Specialization, and the Gender Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(4), pages 763-793.
    8. Vinicius Carrasco, 2006. "Organizational structure and the hold-up problem," Textos para discussão 521, Department of Economics PUC-Rio (Brazil).
    9. Shingo Ishiguro, 2010. "Holdup, search, and inefficiency," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 44(2), pages 307-338, August.
    10. George J. Mailath & Volker Nocke & Andrew Postlewaite, 2004. "Business Strategy, Human Capital, and Managerial Incentives," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(4), pages 617-633, December.
    11. Suresh P. Sethi & Sushil Gupta & Vipin K. Agrawal & Vijay K. Agrawal, 2022. "Nobel laureates’ contributions to and impacts on operations management," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4283-4303, December.
    12. Larry Samuelson & Andrew Postlewaite & George Mailath, 2007. "Pricing in Matching Markets," 2007 Meeting Papers 531, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Mailath, George J. & Postlewaite, Andrew & Samuelson, Larry, 2013. "Pricing and investments in matching markets," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(2), May.
    14. de Meza, David & Lockwood, Ben, 2010. "Too much investment? A problem of endogenous outside options," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 503-511, July.
    15. Ilya Segal & Michael D.Whinston, 2012. "Property Rights [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    16. Luis Rayo, 2002. "Relational Team Incentives and Ownership," Theory workshop papers 357966000000000087, UCLA Department of Economics.
    17. Malina, Christiane, 2019. "A normative analysis of subsidization of all-electric vehicles in Germany," CAWM Discussion Papers 109, University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP).
    18. Yeon-Koo Che & Jozsef Sakovics, 2006. "The Hold-up Problem," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 142, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    19. Kaido, Hiroaki, 2017. "Asymptotically Efficient Estimation Of Weighted Average Derivatives With An Interval Censored Variable," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 33(5), pages 1218-1241, October.
    20. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    General equilibrium; sunspots; incomplete markets;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D50 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - General
    • D51 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium - - - Exchange and Production Economies
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making

    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:pen:papers:03-014. 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: Administrator (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupaus.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.