Synergies and price trends in sequential auctions

In this paper we consider sequential auctions where an individual’s value for a bundle of objects is either greater than the sum of the values for the objects separately (positive synergy) or less than the sum (negative synergy). We show that the existence of positive synergies implies declining expected prices. When synergies are negative, expected prices are increasing. There are several corollaries. First, the seller is indi¤erent between selling the objects simultaneously as a bundle or sequentially when synergies are positive. Second, when synergies are negative, the expected revenue generated by the simultaneous auction can be larger or smaller than the expected revenue generated by the sequential auction. In addition, in the presence of positive synergies, an option to buy the additional object at the price of the …rst object is never exercised in the symmetric equilibrium and the seller’s revenue is unchanged. Under negative synergies, in contrast, if there is an equilibrium where the option is never exercised, then equilibrium prices may either increase or decrease and, therefore, the net e¤ect on the seller’s revenue of the introduction of an option is ambiguous. Finally, we examine two special cases with asymmetric players. In the …rst case, players have distinct synergies. In this example, even if one player has positive synergies and the other has negative synergies, it is still possible for expected prices to decline. In the second case, one player wants two objects and the remaining players want one object each. For this example, we show that expected prices may not necessarily decrease as predicted by Branco (1997). The reason is that players with singleunit demand will generally bid less than their true valuations in the …rst period. Therefore, there are two opposing forces; the reduction in the bid of the player with multiple-demand in the last auction and less aggressive bidding in the …rst auction by the players with single-unit demand.

Can a great resume hurt? Gender and contrast effects on recruiting

Recruiters make many inferences about applicants' abilities and interpersonal attributes on the basis of applicants' resumes. For example, every once in a while, a good resume leaves a strong positive impression and the recruiter creates a high expectation for the selection interview. What if a disappointing interview follows? Will the great resume help or hurt the candidate? The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of a good resume on the recruiter’s evaluation of a candidate when a non-enthusiastic interview follows as well as the interacting role of gender. The results of two online experiments (n=454) where participants played the role of the recruiter, showed that, on average, a very good resume (vs. no resume) before a non-enthusiastic interview did not affect the recruiter’s evaluation of the candidate. However, when the recruiter’s and the candidate’s gender were taken into consideration, a different picture emerged. While no effect was found for male recruiters, the candidate’s resume had a clear significant impact on female recruiter’s evaluations: when the candidate was also a female, the good resume shown before the non-enthusiastic interview performance tended to help, whereas when the candidate was a male, the good resume had a significant negative effect on female recruiters’ evaluation of the candidate. In sum, in situations where the resume had a strong impact on the recruiter’s evaluation (female recruiters), the direction of the effect was moderated by the candidate’s gender. Gender differences in information processing as well as in-group/out-group biases due to gender matching are used to hypothesize and explain the main findings.

Contracting with repeated moral hazard and private evaluations

A repeated moral hazard setting in which the Principal privately observes the Agent’s output is studied. It is shown that there is no loss from restricting the analysis to contracts in which the Agent is supposed to exert effort every period, receives a constant efficiency wage and no feedback until he is fired. The optimal contract for a finite horizon is characterized, and shown to require burning of resources. These are only burnt after the worst possible realization sequence and the amount is independent of both the length of the horizon and the discount factor (δ). For the infinite horizon case a family of fixed interval review contracts is characterized and shown to achieve first best as δ → 1. The optimal contract when δ << 1 is partially characterized. Incentives are optimally provided with a combination of efficiency wages and the threat of termination, which will exhibit memory over the whole history of realizations. Finally, Tournaments are shown to provide an alternative solution to the problem.

International civil society actors in Genetically Modificied Organisms as a field of struggle: a neo-gramscian study in Brazil and the United Kingdom

Since the international financial and food crisis that started in 2008, strong emphasis has been made on the importance of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) (or “transgenics”) under the claim that they could contribute to increase food productivity at a global level, as the world population is predicted to reach 9.1 billion in the year 2050 and food demand is predicted to increase by as much as 50% by 2030. GMOs are now at the forefront of the debates and struggles of different actors. Within civil society actors, it is possible to observe multiple, and sometime, conflicting roles. The role of international social movements and international NGOs in the GMO field of struggle is increasingly relevant. However, while many of these international civil society actors oppose this type of technological developments (alleging, for instance, environmental, health and even social harms), others have been reportedly cooperating with multinational corporations, retailers, and the biotechnology industry to promote GMOs. In this thesis research, I focus on analysing the role of “international civil society” in the GMO field of struggle by asking: “what are the organizing strategies of international civil society actors, such as NGOs and social movements, in GMO governance as a field of struggle?” To do so, I adopt a neo-Gramscian discourse approach based on the studies of Laclau and Mouffe. This theoretical approach affirms that in a particular hegemonic regime there are contingent alliances and forces that overpass the spheres of the state and the economy, while civil society actors can be seen as a “glue” to the way hegemony functions. Civil society is then the site where hegemony is consented, reproduced, sustained, channelled, but also where counter-hegemonic and emancipatory forces can emerge. Considering the importance of civil society actors in the construction of hegemony, I also discuss some important theories around them. The research combines, on the one hand, 36 in-depth interviews with a range of key civil society actors and scientists representing the GMO field of struggle in Brazil (19) and the UK (17), and, on the other hand, direct observations of two events: Rio+20 in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, and the first March Against Monsanto in London in 2013. A brief overview of the GMO field of struggle, from its beginning and especially focusing in the 1990s when the process of hegemonic formation became clearer, serves as the basis to map who are the main actors in this field, how resource mobilization works, how political opportunities (“historical contingencies”) are discovered and exploited, which are the main discourses (“science” and “sustainability” - articulated by “biodiversity preservation”, “food security” and “ecological agriculture”) articulated among the actors to construct a collective identity in order to attract new potential allies around “GMOs” (“nodal point”), and which are the institutions and international regulations within these processes that enable hegemony to emerge in meaningful and durable hegemonic links. This mapping indicates that that the main strategies applied by the international civil society actors are influenced by two central historical contingencies in the GMO field of struggle: 1) First Multi-stakeholder Historical Contingency; and 2) “Supposed” Hegemony Stability. These two types of historical contingency in the GMO field of struggle encompass deeper hegemonic articulations and, because of that, they induce international civil society actors to rethink the way they articulate and position themselves within the field. Therefore, depending on one of those moments, they will apply one specific strategy of discourse articulation, such as: introducing a new discourse in hegemony articulation to capture the attention of the public and of institutions; endorsing new plural demands; increasing collective visibility; facilitating material articulations; sharing a common enemy identity; or spreading new ideological elements among the actors in the field of struggle.