PUBLISHED PAPERS:
Guarantees of Origin and Competition in the Spot Electricity Market (with Isabel Hovdahl, Mario Blazquez, Endre Bjørndal and Mette Bjørndal, accepted for publication, Scandinavian Journal of Economics)
Auctioning Long-Term projects under Financial Constraints (with David Martimort, Review of Economic Studies, 2024)
The value of screening tools in cartel cases (with Armando J.G. Pires, Ronny Gjendemsjø, Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui and Frode Skjeret, accepted for publication, European Competition Journal)
Committee Preferences and Information (with Claudine Desrieux, Journal of Industry, Trade and Competition, 2023, 23, 243–260)
Optimal Procurement and Investment in New Technologies under Uncertainty (with Gijsbert Zwart, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 2023, 147, 104605)
Who drops out of entrepreneurship? An experiment during the Covid-19 lockdown (with Claudine Desrieux and Romain Espinosa, Managerial & Decision Economics, 2023, 44(2), 698-715)
Level-k Models Rationalize Overspending in Contests (with Marco Serena, Games, 13(3), 45)
Bidding Competition on the Norwegian Market for Road Maintenance (with Armando J.G. Pires and Frode Skjeret, Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, 2022, 56(4), 464-487)
Investments and the Role of Costly Procedures (with Takakazu Honryo, Journal of Economics and Business, 2022, 122, 106068)
Access-price structure and entrants' build-or-buy incentives in mobile markets (Øystein Foros and Hans Jarle Kind, Journal of Regulatory Economics, 2022, 61, 67-87)
The Role of Budget Constraints in Sequential Elimination Tournaments (with Olga Chiappinelli, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2021, 123(4), 1059-1087)
Dynamic Procurement under Uncertainty: Optimal Design and implications for Incomplete Contracts (with David Martimort, 2016, American Economic Review, 106(11), 3238-3274)
Long-Term Contracts, Irreversibility and Uncertainty (2016, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 18, 764-785)
Procurement and Predation: Dynamic Sourcing from Financially Constrained Suppliers (2014, Journal of Public Economics, 120, 157-168)
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS IN SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES:
Sätt betyg på leverantörerna! Ökad effektivitet med ratingsystem i offentlig upphandling (Sofia Lundberg, Mats A Bergman and Lars Henriksson, SNS Analys, 2024)
Offentlig upphandling ‒ i gränslandet mellan ekonomi och juridik (Sofia Lundberg, Mats A Bergman and Lars Henriksson, SNS Konjunkturrådsrapport, 2022)
Plattformsøkonomi og finans (Magma, 2019, 8, 80-86)
WORKING PAPERS AND WORK IN PROGRESS:
Partnerships and Mergers when Size Matters (with Øystein Foros and Hans Jarle Kind, submitted)
In several industries, downstream competitors form upstream partnerships. An important reason for doing so arises when upstream marginal costs are decreasing in sales. Such economies of scale imply that downstream prices might be strategic substitutes. This has profound effects on the strategic behavior of both members of a partnership (insiders) and non-members (outsiders). In particular, the insiders may prefer to remain downstream rivals rather than to merge. The reason is that if they were to merge, they would de facto commit to set higher prices. If prices are strategic substitutes, the outsiders would then, to the detriment of the insiders, respond by reducing their prices. If this effect is sufficiently strong, a merger will be unprofitable.
Delegation in Teams (with Takakazu Honryo, submitted)
This paper considers delegation of a decision to a team of informed agents. It shows under what conditions delegation is optimal as well as to whom to delegate the formal decision-making right. The latter depends on a trade-off between 1) improved communication and better information in the team when the player with the decision-making rights is considered closer to the other agents' preferences and 2) the cost from distorted decisions due to biased and misaligned preferences.
Environment and Competition in Public Procurement (with Claudine Desrieux, submitted)
Over the decade, the European legislation on public procurement has been clarified to faciliate "green" public procurement. Traditionally the best value for money has been the main goal of public procurement, while new regulations has increased the scope for secondary goals such as environmental policy etc. We investigate how the secondary goal of greener public procurement has affected output of public tenders. Using the TED database, we investigate whether environmental criteria in public contracts are associated with a lower degree of competition. Exploring French public contracts between 2017 and 2019 for the 100 largest cities, our results show that the introduction of a green criterium in the public procurement notices negatively impacts the number of firms participating to the competitive tendering.
Underrepresentation, Quotas and Stigma: A dynamic argument for reform (with Justin Valasek)
The tension between increased representation and stigma is central to the debate on whether to use quotas to address underrepresentation in high-profile professions. We address this trade-off using a dynamic model of career selection where juniors value both the identity and prestige of their mentors (seniors). A preference for homophily causes persistence of underrepresentation, even if discrimination is eliminated, suggesting intervention is needed. However, if an abrupt quota causes a high level of stigma, then underrepresented juniors of high talent will select out of the profession, causing a persistence of stigma. Encouragingly, we show that gradual reform—while introducing some stigma in the short term—enables a transition to a stigma-free steady state with equal representation in the long term. We discuss the implications of our analysis for commonly-used measures to increase representation
Management and Organizational Behavior under Asymmetric Information (with Takakazu Honryo)
This paper analyzes and compares different decision-makings styles in a principal-agent environment with private information. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for a decision-making style to be optimal. We also consider the interaction between different decision-making styles and show that it is preferable for the principal to use one single decision-making style for a given decision.
Business-to-Business Negotiations with Outside Options (with Øystein Foros and Hans Jarle Kind)
In many markets we observe that suppliers offer a range of products, where some products are strong brand products for retailers, such that in practice no equivalent suppliers exist. For other products o
ered by the same suppliers there may exist alternatives (outside options) for the retailers. We consider a bilateral bargaining framework where one supplier and one retailer negotiate over linear wholesale prices for two goods offered by the supplier. The retailer has a threat to execute an outside option for one of the goods. In contrast to the case with a single-good supplier, the distribution of bargaining power affects wholesale prices also when the outside option is binding. The higher the retailer's bargaining weight in the outside option, the lower are wholesale prices for both goods. The wholesale prices are identical for both goods, even though an outside option only exists for one of the goods. Gains for the retailer from threatening to use its outside option decreases in its own bargaining weight.
Channel Coordination on Exclusive vs. Non-Exclusive Content under Endogenous Consumer Homing (with Ole Kristian Dyskeland and Øystein Foros)
We analyze competition between two digital platforms selling subscriptions for unlimited access to their content catalogs (e.g., streaming services). A content provider offers premium additional content and decides on wholesale contracts determining whether its content will be distributed non-exclusively (on both platforms) or exclusively (on one platform). The content provider chooses between a revenue sharing contract and a per-consumer wholesale pricing contract. Our model yields clear predictions. In markets with low initial exclusivity, such as music streaming (e.g., Spotify, Apple Music), the content provider uses per-consumer wholesale pricing to promote non-exclusive distribution. Platforms set subscription prices that lead to full consumer singlehoming. Conversely, in markets with high initial exclusivity, like streaming of films and series (e.g., Netflix, HBO Max), the content provider prefers a revenue-sharing contract that induces exclusive distribution, with platforms setting prices that encourage some consumers to multihome.