Charles Pébereau

Research

None of your business! Efficient disclosure policies with heterogeneous audiences (pdf)

Abstract: This paper studies the efficient disclosure of performance information by a principal about an agent with career concerns vis-à-vis heterogeneous employers. The information is more predictive of the agent's talent for jobs similar to the one she was evaluated for. The principal trades off effort incentives and the agent's intertemporal welfare. In equilibrium, the principal discloses information differentially, and information structures are non-decreasing in job similarity. Incentivizing higher effort requires disclosing more information, in priority to employers who value it the most. The model can rationalize laws differentially restricting access to worker and consumer personal data, and inform privacy debates.

Barriers to real-time electricity pricing: Evidence from New Zealand  -- with  Kevin Remmy (pdf) 

International Journal of Industrial Organization 2023, 89, 102979

Abstract: This paper studies the introduction of real-time electricity pricing in the New Zealand residential retail market to understand why its market share remained below 1.25%. We use rich panel data of all retail switches between 2014 and 2018 and an unexpected wholesale price spike to study adoption and attrition. Exploiting the staggered roll-out of real-time pricing in different locations we find that attrition decreases with experience. We also find that prospective adopters are present biased. The combination of these findings explains why adoption stalled and shows that wholesale price spikes pose a serious threat to widespread adoption of real-time pricing.