In recent years, the practitioner literature in operations management has seen a dramatic surge in articles on quality management. It reflects the increased emphasis on quality by U.S. firms, which has been attributed largely to increased competition faced by them. The question of how quality is...

Empirically, we find that Web logs (or "blogs") often link to other blogs in the same category. We present an analytical model that explains why a rational blogger may choose to link to another blog. We allow bloggers to differ along two dimensions: (1) the ability to post news-breaking content,...

Consumers often purchase goods that are "hard to find" to conspicuously display their exclusivity and social status. Firms that produce such conspicuously consumed goods such as designer apparel, fashion goods, jewelry, etc., often face challenges in making optimal pricing and production...

Film studios occasionally withhold movies from critics before their release. Because the unreviewed movies tend to be below average in quality, this practice provides a useful setting in which to test models of limited strategic thinking: Do moviegoers seem to realize that no review is a sign of...

We investigate a two-stage serial supply chain with stationary stochastic demand and fixed transportation times. Inventory holding costs are charged at each stage, and each stage may incur a consumer backorder penalty cost, e.g. the upper stage (the supplier) may dislike backorders at the lower...

This paper explores the distinction between normative and positive theoretical statements in a game theoretic context from a Bayesian perspective. Normative and positive theoretical statements are often confused in decision making research. The confusion results from some unique epistemological...

This paper investigates equilibrium R&D investment strategies of firms endowed with different innovation potentials. To address this issue, this paper permits two stages of innovation and develops a simple stochastic game model involving two firms. It is shown that in equilibrium, a leader in...

The paradox involved in sequences of Prisoner's Dilemma games is due to the fact that game theoretic definitions of optimality rarely coincide with any natural meaning of the word. Decision makers should incorporate their beliefs and experience into any mathematical analysis of the games. Once...

A service plan is a type of optional warranty beyond manufacturers' base warranties that retailers offer to consumers. In this paper, we examine how a service plan affects the role played by a manufacturer's base warranty. Analysis shows that when consumers can assess product quality (i.e., the...

Faced with the decision of whether or not to adopt a new technology whose economic value cannot be gauged with certainty, the manager of the firm may elect to decrease the uncertainty by sequentially gathering information (at a unit cost of c 0), updating his prior beliefs in a Bayesian manner....