Panagiotis Kyriazis

We investigate the relationship between product offerings, information dissemination, and consumer decision-making in a monopolistic screening environment in which consumers lack private information about their valuation of quality-differentiated products. An intermediary, who is driven by the objective of maximizing consumer surplus but is also biased towards high-quality products, provides recommendations after the monopolist announces the menu of product choices. We characterize the monopolist’s profit-maximizing finite-item menu. Our results show that as intermediaries place greater emphasis on consumer surplus over product quality, sellers are prompted to strategically expand their product range. Intriguingly, this augmented product variety decreases economic efficiency compared to scenarios where direct seller-to-consumer information provision is the norm. The role of information intermediaries proves pivotal in shaping consumer welfare, market profitability, and overarching economic efficiency. Our insights underscore the complexities introduced by these intermediaries that policymakers and market designers must consider when designing policies centered on consumer learning and market information transparency. 

Coordination facilitation and efficient decision-making are two essential components of successful leadership. In this paper, we take an informational approach and investigate how followers' information impacts coordination and efficient leadership in a model featuring a leader and a team of followers. We show that efficiency is achieved as the unique rationalizable outcome of the game when followers possess sufficiently imprecise information. In contrast, if followers have accurate information, the leader may fail to coordinate them toward the desired outcome or even take an inefficient action herself. We discuss the implications of the results for the role of leaders in the context of financial fragility and crises.

We study the effectiveness of information manipulation by regimes within the framework of a regime-change global game. Contrary to previous findings, our analysis suggests that costly information manipulation may not necessarily enhance the regime's survival prospects when faced with uprisings. This finding parallels the findings of the signal-jamming literature in economics, where costly actions do not alter equilibrium outcomes but are undertaken nonetheless due to strategic considerations. Our study highlights a novel aspect of the possibility of manipulating information, for instance, via propaganda, where the regime, despite being informed about its strength, falls into a trap of its own making. 

We examine the role of strategic mediators in facilitating agreements in bargaining problems in an international relationships framework where failure to reach a negotiated settlement can escalate into conflict. Two parties are bargaining on how to split a pie, each characterized by a type, signifying their strength or political determination. Information is incomplete, with one party’s type being common knowledge, while the other party’s type is privately observed.  A mediator can provide information to the uninformed party regarding the opponent’s type. The mediator’s preferences depend on the issue in dispute in a strategic way: the mediator’s ideal split of the pie depends on the types of the players, perhaps due to political or social pressures, or in anticipation of future gains. Our preliminary findings indicate that the presence of the mediator leads to informative equilibria, where the probability of conflict is lower. 

What can a regulator achieve by controlling information in a monopolistic market? Can the provision of information by the regulator correct market inefficiencies and increase welfare? If so, to what extent, and how can it complement other regulatory tools such as taxes, subsidies, or price caps?