Rosina Rodríguez Olivera

Research

Published and Accepted Papers:

"Strategic incentives and the optimal sale of information" (American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2024)

Abstract

A monopolist data-seller offers information to privately informed data-buyers. I characterize the data-seller's optimal menu, which screens between two types of data-buyers.  Data-buyers' preferences for information allow the data-seller to extract all surplus and the optimal menu's features are determined by the interaction between data-buyers' strategic incentives and the correlation of their private information. The data-seller offers  perfect information to the data-buyer with the highest willingness to pay and partial information, which makes this type indifferent. Both experiments are informative even when data-buyers have congruent beliefs if they have coordination (anti-coordination) incentives and their private information is negatively (positively) correlated.

Working Papers:

"Optimal disclosure of private information to competitors" 

Abstract

I study the incentives of an informed firm to share its private information with a competitor, and the incentives of a regulator to restrict or mandate disclosure in order to benefit consumers. Firms offer differentiated products and compete à la Bertrand, with one firm holding an informational advantage about demand over its competitor. I show that full disclosure is optimal for the informed firm, as it increases price correlation and enhances surplus extraction from consumers. A regulator can increase expected consumer surplus and overall welfare by limiting disclosure. However, consumers may benefit when the regulator privately discloses some information to the uninformed firm. The consumer-optimal disclosure policy is designed to induce high cross-price elasticities and generate coordination failures in pricing.

"Who Borrows from Whom? Market Segmentation in Consumer Loans"

Abstract

This paper develops a model of oligopolistic screening in a credit market with heterogeneous lenders, borrower default risk, and regulatory interest-rate caps. Two lenders compete by offering menus of loan contracts and differ in their lending costs. Borrowers privately know their repayment risk. In equilibrium, a cutoff sorts safer borrowers into banks and riskier borrowers into non-banks. I characterize the optimal menu for each lender and show how regulation changes these menus. Binding caps induce pooling, change approval probabilities, and shift the cutoff between lenders. I characterize the welfare effects of the cap, highlighting the trade-off between credit access and borrower protection.