Working papers

The papers

The essay compresses two working papers. The first builds the technology and the frontier; the second builds the institutional consequences. They are designed to be read in that order, and to be cited as Gill (2026a) and Gill (2026b).

Gill (2026a) · SSRN Working Paper 7307578 · August 2026

The Economics of Machine Verification: Verification-Cost Shocks and the Extensive Margin of Monitoring

Amrit Gill · Independent Researcher

Economics understands how costly verification disciplines behavior. This paper asks which claims become worth verifying at all when machine intelligence changes the technology of verification. Verification is modeled as a technology vector — fixed and marginal costs, four pipeline reliabilities from detection to enforcement, and a false-positive rate. Three results follow: a verification frontier L*(τ, N) in claim value and claim volume, with component-wise comparative statics; recovery as the wrong success metric, with measured recoveries hump-shaped in verification effectiveness; and diverging private and social verification frontiers. The broader implication is institutional: much of commercial architecture is adaptation to costly checking, and where the pipeline clears, a verification-cost collapse re-selects it.

Keywords:
artificial intelligence; verification cost; monitoring; extensive margin; information rents; auditing; deterrence; enforcement
JEL:
D82, D83, D86, K42, L14, M42, O33
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DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.7307578 — please cite the SSRN version so citations consolidate.

Gill (2026b) · Working paper · August 2026 · SSRN posting in progress

Machine Verification and the Institutions of Trust: Reputation, Certification, and Contract when Checking Becomes Cheap

Amrit Gill · Independent Researcher

Many institutions of commerce exist because verification is expensive: brands bond unobservable quality, certifiers amortize the fixed cost of checking, and intermediaries are paid, in part, a verification wage. In a model where trading relationships choose among opacity, reputation bonds, third-party certification, and direct machine verification, five results follow: verification de-institutionalizes, with certification markets able to end by tipping rather than decay; brands migrate rather than die; optimality rents compress through repricing and exit down to switching friction; accusing gets cheap faster than proving innocence, expanding nuisance challenge unless rebuttal costs fall symmetrically; and opacity relocates toward unverifiable attributes. An implementation in commercial energy contracting operationalizes both layers.

Keywords:
verification cost; artificial intelligence; reputation; brands; certification; intermediation; contract design; nuisance claims
JEL:
D82, D83, D86, L14, L15, K41, M42, O33
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Cite

@techreport{gill2026economics,
  author      = {Gill, Amrit},
  title       = {The Economics of Machine Verification: Verification-Cost Shocks and the Extensive Margin of Monitoring},
  year        = {2026},
  month       = {August},
  type        = {SSRN Working Paper},
  number      = {7307578},
  doi         = {10.2139/ssrn.7307578},
  url         = {https://ssrn.com/abstract=7307578}
}

@techreport{gill2026institutions,
  author      = {Gill, Amrit},
  title       = {Machine Verification and the Institutions of Trust: Reputation, Certification, and Contract when Checking Becomes Cheap},
  year        = {2026},
  month       = {August},
  type        = {Working paper},
  url         = {https://post-opacity.com/papers/institutions-of-trust.pdf}
}

@misc{gill2026postopacity,
  author       = {Gill, Amrit},
  title        = {Post-Opacity: What Happens When Checking Becomes Cheap},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://post-opacity.com}}
}

Disclosure (both papers): large language models were used extensively in drafting, revising, and stress-testing; all claims, judgments, and errors are the author’s own. The author holds commercial interests in automated verification of commercial energy billing.