Extracting information or resource? The Hotelling rule revisited under asymmetric information
研究了在特许经营者对资源初始存量拥有私人信息时，最优开采路径如何受信息成本影响，提出了“虚拟霍特林法则”，并探讨了通过特许权使用费和许可费实施最优合同的可能性。
Abstract A concessionaire has private information on the initial stock of resource. A “virtual Hotelling rule” describes how the resource price evolves over time and how extraction costs are compounded with information costs along the optimal extraction path. Fields which are heterogeneous in terms of their initial stocks follow different extraction paths. Resource might be left unexploited in the long run as a way to foster incentives. The optimal contract may sometimes be implemented through royalties and license fees. With a market of concessionaires, asymmetric information leads to a “virtual Herfindahl principle” and to another form of heterogeneity across active concessionaires.