Integration and Information: Markets and Hierarchies Revisited
Author(s)
Gibbons, Robert
Holden, Richard
Powell, Michael
Date Issued
January 2010
Publisher
Cambridge, MA; Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Series/Report no.
MIT Sloan School of Management Working Paper;4776-10
Abstract
We analyze a rational-expectations model of price formation in an intermediate-good market under uncertainty. There is a continuum of dyads, each consisting of an upstream party and downstream party. Both parties can make specific investments at private cost, and there is a machine that either party can own. As in property rights models, different ownership structures create different incentives for the parties' investments. As in rational-expectations models, some parties may invest in acquiring information, which is then incorporated into the market-clearing price by the parties' trading behaviors. The informativeness of the price mechanism affects the returns to specific investments and hence the optimal ownership structure for individual dyads; meanwhile, the ownership choices by individual dyads affect the informativeness of the price mechanism. In equilibrium the informativeness of the price mechanism can induce ex ante homogeneous dyads to choose heterogeneous ownership structures.
Persistent DSpace Link
