Peter Achim

I am a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Economics and Related Studies at the University of York. My research area is microeconomic theory with a focus on information economics, industrial organization, and financial economics. Much of my work studies the role of information acquisition and disclosure in economic decision-making and market outcomes. My current research interests include innovation, learning, verification, and disclosure specifically in the context of digital markets and financial markets.

Office: Alcuin College, A/EC/103

Office phone: +44 1904 32-4595

Curriculum Vitae: C.V. (PDF)

Working Papers

The Tension Between Trust and Oversight in Long Term Relations (with Jan Knoepfle) - Submitted
This paper studies the dynamics of trust and oversight in long-term relationships with limited commitment and no money. A principal continually decides whether to approve an allocation to an agent. To remain eligible, the agent must exert effort, but eligibility is observable to the principal through costly verification only. Tension between trust and oversight arises at high trust levels, where effort and verification incentives work in opposite directions. At a low trust level, incentives align, but a coordination problem arises which can be overcome through vol- untary disclosure by the agent. We fully characterize robust Markov Perfect Equilibria and show how underlying equilibrium properties can be traced back to intertemporal and contemporaneous strategic interactions.

The Hidden Cost of Cheap Advice (with Bojia Li) - Submitted
In this paper, we investigate monopoly pricing when the buyer can acquire information about the value of the seller's product from an independent expert. We demonstrate that the expert is advantageous to the buyer only when the cost of seeking advice is not too low. When the buyer faces a moderate cost of obtaining information from the expert, the seller ’prices out’ the expert by offering discounts to dissuade the buyer from seeking advice. This approach generates a positive surplus for the buyer. In contrast, when the buyer’s cost is low, the seller ’prices in’ the expert, capitalizing on the buyer’s easy access to information to demand a premium. We also show that the seller and intermediary may benefit from tacit collusion and direct payments in pricing-out equilibria but never in pricing-in equilibria.

Publications

Relational Enforcement (with Jan Knoepfle)
Theoretical Economics, 2024, May, 19(2):823-63.

Innovation through Competitive Experimentation
Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2024, 111, 102957.

Strategic Investment and Learning with Private Information (with Nicolas Klein)
Journal of Economic Theory, 2022, 204, 105523

Seller Experimentation and Trade
Review of Economic Design, 2022, 27(2), 337 - 357

Who Goes First? Strategic Delay under Information Asymmetry
Theoretical Economics, 2018, 13, 341 - 375

Unmediated Communication with Partially Verifiable Types
Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2011, 47(1), 99 - 107

Work in progress

Efficiency in Innovation Contests (with Tsz-Ning Wong)
Work in Progress

Information Governance: Theories of Creating and Disseminating Information
(with Jan Knoepfle, Deniz Kattwinkel, and Alexandra Scherf)
Work in Progress