American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

We consider a decision-maker sequentially choosing among alternatives when periodic payoffs depend on both chosen and unchosen alternatives in that period. We show that when flow payoffs are the sum or product of payoffs from chosen and unchosen alternatives, the optimal policy is an index policy. We characterize key properties of the optimal dynamics and present an algorithm for computing the indices explicitly. Furthermore, we use the results to generalize Weitzman’s (1979) classic “Pandora’s boxes” problem to allow for complementarities. We illustrate the framework’s usefulness through applications, including decision problems with disappearing alternatives, repeated bargaining, dynamic supervision, and dynamic occupational choice. (JEL C78, D82, M11)

Kfir Eliaz

Daniel Fershtman

Alexander Frug

American Economic Journal Microeconomics

On Optimal Scheduling

关于最优调度

Antitrust authorities search public documents to discover anticompetitive mergers. Thus, investor disclosures may alert them to deals that would otherwise go undetected, creating disincentives for managers to divulge certain transactions. We study this behavior in publicly traded US companies. First, we employ a regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effect of mandatory disclosures. We find that releasing information to investors poses antitrust risk. Second, we introduce a method for measuring undisclosed mergers that relies on financial accounting reporting requirements. We find that undisclosed mergers total $1.85 trillion between 2002 and 2016. (JEL D22, G32, G34, G38, K21, L41, M41)

John M. Barrios

Thomas G. Wollmann

A New Era of Midnight Mergers: Antitrust Risk and Investor Disclosures

午夜合并的新时代：反垄断风险与投资者披露

Attitudes toward fairness and redistribution differ along socioeconomic lines. To understand their formation, we conduct a large-scale experiment on attention to merit and luck and the effect of attention on fairness decisions. Randomly advantaged subjects pay less attention to information about true merit and retain more economic surplus, and this effect persists in subsequent impartial decisions. Attention also has a causal role: encouraging subjects to look at merit reduces the effect of an advantaged position on allocations. This suggests that attention-based policy interventions may be effective in reducing polarized views on inequality. (JEL C91, D63, D83)

Dianna R. Amasino

Davide D. Pace

Joël J. van der Weele

Fair Shares and Selective Attention

公平份额与选择性关注

I explain why current success can undermine an organization’s ability to innovate. I consider a standard bandit problem between a safe and a risky arm with two modifications. First, a principal allocates resources. Second, an agent must install the risky arm, which is not contractible. If the principal cannot commit to a resource policy, a dual moral hazard problem emerges: The agent’s pay must be tied to the risky arm’s success to encourage installation, inducing the principal to stop experimenting with the arm prematurely. This problem intensifies as the safe arm becomes more profitable, potentially leaving the organization worse off. (JEL D21, D82, D86, O31)

Enrique Ide

Dual Moral Hazard and the Tyranny of Success

双重道德风险与成功的暴政

Employee spin-offs harm incumbent firms by increasing competition (benefiting consumers) and preventing firm owners from making beneficial investments in workers who may later spin off (harming consumers). We model noncompete agreements (NCAs) as solutions for the firm and analyze the resulting trade-off for consumers. We show that market structure and the nature of investment play large roles. Counterintuitively, increased investment benefits have the potential to harm consumers such that industries where firms value NCAs the most are those where harm is greater. Finally, we draw two analogies between NCAs and antitrust and show how those areas inform NCA policy. (JEL D42, D43, J41, K21, L26, M13, M53)

Michael Lipsitz

Mark J. Tremblay

Noncompete Agreements and the Welfare of Consumers

非竞争协议与消费者福利

Abbreviation	Am. Econ. J. Microecon.
Journal Impact	2.27
Quartiles(Global)	ECONOMICS(Q2)

ISSN	1945-7669, 1945-7685
h-index	54

Publication Information	Publisher: American Economic Association，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 2009，Proportion of original research papers: 100.00%，Self Citation Rate:4.50%， Gold OA Rate: 0.00%

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics

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On Optimal Scheduling

A New Era of Midnight Mergers: Antitrust Risk and Investor Disclosures

Fair Shares and Selective Attention

Dual Moral Hazard and the Tyranny of Success

Noncompete Agreements and the Welfare of Consumers

On Optimal Scheduling

A New Era of Midnight Mergers: Antitrust Risk and Investor Disclosures

Fair Shares and Selective Attention

Dual Moral Hazard and the Tyranny of Success

Noncompete Agreements and the Welfare of Consumers