The common marketing practice of offering subscribers enticements to switch suppliers is explored. It is shown that this type of price discrimination is the natural mode of competition in subscription markets such as long distance telephony and banking and that it prevails even when the industry...

Consumer privacy and the market for customer information in electronic retailing are investigated. The value of customer information derives from the ability of firms to identify individual consumers and charge them personalized prices. Two settings are studied, a closed privacy regime in which...

Personal privacy is studied in the context of a competitive product (or labor) market. In the first stage of the game, firms that sell homogeneous goods or services (e.g., insurance, credit, or rental housing) post prices they promise to charge approved applicants. In the second stage, each...

A two-period model in which a monopolist endeavors to learn about the permanent demand parameter of a specific repeat buyer is presented. The buyer may strategically reject the seller's first-period offer for one of two reasons. First, in order to conceal information (i.e., to pool), a...

We study a dynamic principal agent model of fraud and evolution of trust. The principal has limited power of commitment and wishes to accept a real project and reject a fake. The agent is either an ethical type that produces only a real project, or a strategic type that also has the ability to...

A two-period model in which a monopolist endeavors to learn about the permanent demand parameter of a specific repeat buyer is investigated. The buyer may strategically reject the seller's first-period offer for one of two reasons. First, in order to conceal information (i.e., to pool), a...

The incentives for an advisor first to diligently perform research and second to accurately report her results are investigated in a model of optimal contracting. To motivate the advisor to collect and analyze the relevant data, her compensation must include a contingent component that depends...