In commercial transactions, an intermediary might be involved to help transacting parties to conduct their business. Nevertheless, the intermediary may not be fully trusted. In this paper, we introduce the concept of intermediary (or agent) in a non-repudiation protocol, define the aims of intermediary non-repudiation protocols, and analyze their security requirements. We present a simple scena...

We investigate the role of commissions paid by product providers to information intermediaries who advise customers on product suitability. These commissions and hidden “kickbacks” are widespread and controversial in markets for retail financial products and health services. We show that product providers have an incentive to pay commissions to steer the intermediary’s advice and to counteract ...

We propose a dynamic theory of financial intermediaries as collateralization specialists that are better able to collateralize claims than households. Intermediaries require capital as they can borrow against their loans only to the extent that households themselves can collateralize the assets backing the loans. The net worth of financial intermediaries and the corporate sector are both state ...

A model of communication with two features is presented: inattentive final receivers who are heterogeneous in their inattention, and the presence of a monopolistic intermediary, whose preferences are not aligned with the preferences of the initial sender. The sender faces a dilemma how to shape her message to maneuver the intermediary into telling the final receivers what she considers importan...

This paper provides a theory of endogenous leverage through rehypothecation in collateralized intermediation. Overcollateralization with an rehypothecation option arises as an optimal contract form between broker dealers and their clients to mitigate adverse selection on collateral quality. Such contract prevents the broker dealers from taking advantage of private information on collateral qual...

Bidders’ selection of an auction is important in the study of competing auctioneers. However, in a variety of settings, such as in the spot pricing of online display advertisements, bidders, represented by autonomous agents, are not allowed to bid directly but only via specialized intermediaries. Motivated by the emergence of these markets, we analyze a scenario where a single indivisible good ...