Time Delay and the Extraction of Information Rent in Regulation

A crucial idea in Laffont and Tirole (1993) is the extraction of costly information rent through production distortion. In this paper we augment the Laffont-Tirole model with time delay, highlighting the possibility of further rent extraction through consumption distortion due to the delayed implementation of a public project. This consumption distortion through delay in essence relaxes the incentive constraint in the presence of asymmetric information. We show that a positive but finite delay can be optimal in regulation, and provide a condition differentiating welfare-improving delays from welfare-worsening ones. This condition generalizes the shutdown condition of an inefficient firm in the Laffont-Tirole model.