Mikael Mäkimattila

We consider the revenue-maximizing design and pricing of certification contracts. A certifier offers a menu of tests to an information sender, who holds partial private information about an unknown state and seeks to persuade an information receiver to take a favorable action. The selling mechanism gives information to the receiver through two channels: the actual informativeness of the tests and the sender’s choice among the options in the menu. We characterize the revenue-maximizing menu. In this menu, senders whose beliefs exceed an upper threshold purchase a common test that maximizes their joint surplus, whereas those whose beliefs fall below a lower threshold purchase no test. All sender types who purchase a test are indifferent across all options in the menu, and the receiver obtains zero surplus. We analyze how the results change if the certifier can conceal which test the sender selects.

We study how market competition interacts with the design of buyers' information about product quality when sellers privately choose quality. We characterize seller-optimal information under monopoly and in symmetric equilibria of Bertrand competition. Under competition, optimal disclosure is partially informative and sustains randomization over quality. It differentiates the buyer's beliefs about competing products, softening price competition. Under monopoly, full disclosure is seller-optimal: it sustains efficient quality provision and allows the seller to extract the resulting surplus. We therefore highlight that, when disclosure is designed in sellers' interests, competition can lower quality and total surplus.

We characterize the optimal policy for correcting externalities when redistribution is a concern. When mitigation costs are private and heterogeneous, redistribution through income taxation alone is insufficient: the Pigouvian tax must also vary with income. This result informs the design of optimal carbon dividend policies: equal per-capita rebates are optimal only if incomes are unrelated to key sources of heterogeneity, including (i) heterogeneity in mitigation costs and (ii) the redistributive weights placed on horizontal equity. Using Finnish administrative data, we find that the optimal corrective policy is progressive for vehicle use but regressive for electricity consumption.

I study regulation of a screening monopolist when the regulator cares about the distribution of surplus across heterogeneous consumers and the firm. Consumers privately know their willingness to pay for quality, and the firm privately knows its production costs. Regulatory contracts specify quality--price options that the firm must offer. I show that when the regulator gives greater weight to consumers with lower willingness to pay, baseline regulation is optimal: the regulator requires affordable basic options but leaves the firm free to design and price premium options. Under strong consumer-side redistributive concerns, a single required basic option suffices. The regulator uses the firm's incentive to extract surplus from premium buyers to support low regulated prices for basic options.

We examine how the possibility of buyouts affects start-ups' incentives to innovate, enter markets and compete when there is asymmetric information about start-ups' prospects. Informational frictions may encourage a start-up to adopt a "fake-it-till-you-exit strategy" where it innovates little, enters the market without actual competitive advantage and captures the market by selling at a low price to signal it is valuable. Banning acquisitions may stimulate start-ups' innovation but decrease pre-buyout-stage competition.