Publications:
"Demand-driven Mergers: Advertising, Differentiation, and Welfare" with Ana Espinola-Arredondo and Felix Munoz-Garcia accepted at Managerial and Decision Economics in July 2026 (Under Production).
Abstract: We consider mergers that induce demand changes. We study the firms’ incentives to submit a merger request and the competition authority’s decision to approve the request. We show that merger-induced demand changes help expand settings where the interests of firms and competition authority align, while contexts where their interests are misaligned become less likely. We allow for several extensions, showing that more severe cost convexities make it more likely for firms to submit merger requests that are detrimental for consumers; while more differentiated products or allowing firms to invest in advertising reduces this type of mergers, thus helping align the preferences of the merged entity and the competition authority.
Kanjilal, Kiriti, Ana Espinola-Arredondo, and Felix Munoz-Garcia. "Strategic Merger Approvals Under Incomplete Information." Review of Industrial Organization. Vol. 65, 759–791 (2024).
Abstract: We examine a signaling game where the merging entity privately observes the cost-reduction effect from the merger, but the competition authority does not. The latter, however, observes the firm's submission costs in the merger request, using them to infer its type. We identify pooling equilibria where all firm types, even those with small efficiencies, submit a merger request, which is approved by the regulator. This merger profile cannot be supported under complete information, thus leading to inefficiencies. We investigate under which parameter conditions inefficient mergers are less likely to arise in equilibrium, and which policies hinder them, ultimately improving information transmission from firms to the competition authority.
Kanjilal, Kiriti, Ana Espinola-Arredondo, and Felix Munoz-Garcia. "Does the presence of a public firm facilitate merger approvals?" Economics Letters Vol. 219, 110841 (2022).
Abstract: We study mergers between two or more private firms operating in mixed oligopolies, where we allow for the merger to produce cost-reduction effects. We identify that the presence of public firms can facilitate the approval of welfare-improving mergers, even when their cost-reducing effect is relatively low.
Chaturvedi, Rakesh, Souvik Dutta and Kiriti Kanjilal. "An Economic Model of the Last-Mile Internet", Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization Vol. 191, pp 620-638 (2021).
Abstract: Pricing decisions of an internet service provider (ISP) are studied in a model based on complementarity between broadband connection and content, congestion externalities on consumer side and oligopolistic externalities on content provider side. When consumers face two-part tariffs from the ISP, the equilibrium is sensitive to usage price level but is invariant to its structure on two sides. With nonlinear pricing, the markup of content providers affects consumer prices while congestion externalities and elasticity of content demand shape the price for providers. For the zero-price rule, a neutrality-of-policy result holds with two-part tariffs but not with nonlinear pricing.
Kiriti Kanjilal and Félix Muñoz-García, "Common Pool Resources with Endogenous Equity Shares", Strategic Behavior and the Environment: Vol. 9: No. 1-2, pp 103-143 (2021).
Abstract: We consider a common pool resource (CPR) where, in the first stage, every firm chooses an equity share on its rivals' profits (cross-ownership), in the second stage, firms compete for the resource, and in the third stage, firms compete again for the resource after it regenerated at a given rate. We identify equilibrium equity shares in this setting, and compare them against the socially optimal shares that maximize welfare. Our results show that equity shares are welfare improving under certain conditions, but can lead to a socially insufficient exploitation of the CPR if shares are large enough; as in a merger where firms equally share equity. We discuss how equity taxes can help firms approach socially optimal appropriation levels.
Chaturvedi, Rakesh, and Kiriti Kanjilal. "Experimental analysis of a land assembly mechanism." Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics Vol. 91, 101680 (2021).
Abstract: Market mechanisms for land assembly problems suffer from a holdout problem and coercive legal solutions like eminent domain introduce new inefficiencies. A new mechanism that is not fully market-based but attempts price discovery is proposed, experimentally studied and is shown to improve efficiency. The mechanism is fully specified by two parameters - a percentile value of the empirical distribution of ask-prices that serves as a trading threshold for the buyer and a quantum of penalty to be applied to landowners who bid relatively very high. In a 2 X 2 treatment, it is found that reducing the trading threshold and increasing the penalty improves the efficiency performance.
Kanjilal, Kiriti, and Félix Muñoz-García. "Endogenous equity shares in Cournot competition: Welfare analysis and policy." The BE Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy 20, no. 1 (2019).
Abstract: We consider a duopoly in which firms can strategically choose equity shares on their rival’s profits before competing in quantities. We identify equilibrium equity shares, and subsequently compare them against the optimal equity shares that maximize social welfare. Most previous studies assume that equity shares are exogenous, and those allowing for endogenous shares do not evaluate if equilibrium shares are socially excessive or insufficient. Our results also help us identify taxes on equity acquisition that induce firms to produce a socially optimal output without the need to directly tax output levels.
Working Papers:
"Greener Merger Guidelines: When Do They Matter?" - Ana Espinola-Arredondo, Felix Munoz-Garcia and Kiriti Kanjilal.
Abstract: We study mergers in polluting industries with or without a public firm. We examine how merger approvals are affected when the competition authority’s guidelines consider environmental criteria. As expected, we show that more mergers are approved, yielding less pollution, and higher welfare. However, we find that, when a public firm is present, it seeks to curb pollution. This changes output competition, making the merger more likely to be unprofitable, and strengthening Salant et al.’s (1983) 80-percent rule of merger profitability. In this case, changes in merger guidelines become inconsequential since no merger requests occur in equilibrium. We then extend our model, allowing for the merger to yield cost-reducing effects and the manager of the public firm to ignore pollution.
Epistemic Social Learning: Latent Behavioral Structure under Endogenous Multi-Agent Interaction with Jainendra Shukla, Dhruv Jaiswal and Divyanshi Beniwal submitted to NeurIPS 2026 (Under Review).
Abstract: In many interactive settings, from social and institutional environments to multi-agent systems, agents must infer latent behavioral structure from limited signals while their own actions shape the data they observe. This endogeneity violates the stationary, exogenous assumptions underlying standard likelihood-based methods, leading to failures in adaptation despite accurate clustering. We propose Epistemic Social Learning (ESL), a two-timescale framework that couples belief-based inference with adaptive representation learning under endogenous interaction. At a fast timescale, agents maintain Bayesian beliefs over shared behavioral prototypes. At a slower timescale, prototypes are updated from belief-weighted interaction data via the recursion aligning learned representations with the interaction distributions induced by agent behavior. We formalize ESL as a stochastic approximation process with controlled Markov noise and show that its dynamics track the differential inclusion whose limit sets correspond to self-consistent interaction regimes. Across repeated games with behavioral shifts, ESL reduces post-switch regret by over strong baselines while improving decision-relevant prediction. These results reveal a fundamental gap between latent identification and adaptive performance under endogenous interaction.
Research Grants:
"Understanding Agricultural Land Valuations in India": Rakesh Chaturvedi (PI) and Kiriti Kanjilal (Co-PI)
Granting Authority: Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF)
Scheme: Advanced Research Grant (ARG)
Work in Progress:
Electrophysiological markers of inter-temporal reward decisions under anxiety with Mrinmoy Chakrabarty, Naviya Lall and Shruti Kinger. (Data collection stage)
AI and Investment Games with Rakesh Chaturvedi
Understanding Agricultural Land Valuations in India with Rakesh Chaturvedi and Bhaskar Pandey (work in progress under ANRF-ARG grant)