In the technology and design industries, one product builds on another: a smart television enhances a smart phone. However, due to complimentary features, the utility gained by owning both products from the same firm is greater than the sum of the two products' utility if purchased from separate...

This paper discusses an issue impacting intellectual property products with nearly zero marginal cost: the zero price constraint. As established in the literature, aftermarkets result in a subsidization of the primary market, sometimes resulting in prices below marginal cost. While aftermarket...

Economic theory on the subject of barriers to entry focuses almost exclusively on firms seeking to preserve market power and economic profits. In this paper, we propose that, under certain circumstances, firms may instead choose to reduce barriers to entry as a profit-maximizing mechanism. We...

Instructors and researchers have used the ‘flow' of knowledge (post-test score minus pre-test score) to measure learning in the classroom for the past fifty years. Walstad and Wagner (2016) and Smith and Wagner (2018) move this practice forward by disag- gregating the flow of knowledge and...

As shown by Tversky and Kahneman (1991), framing an outcome as a loss causes individuals to expend extra effort to avoid that outcome. Since classroom performance is a function of student effort in search of a higher grade, we seek to use loss aversion to encourage student effort. This field...

This paper establishes a new method of estimating public dissent that is both cost effective and adaptable. Twitter allows users to post short messages that can be viewed and shared by other users, creating a network of freely and easily observable information. Drawing data directly from...

The fields of psychometrics, economic education, and education have developed more statistically- valid methods of assessing knowledge and learning. These methods include item response theory, value-added learning models, and disaggregated learning. The focus of these methods are on...