This paper studies how selling constraints, which refer to the inability of firms to attend to all the buyers who want to inspect their products, affect the equilibrium price and social welfare. We show that the price that maximizes social welfare is greater than the marginal cost. This is...

This paper studies how selling constraints, which refer to the inability of firms to attend to all the buyers who want to inspect their products, affect the equilibrium price and social welfare. We show that the price that maximizes social welfare is greater than the marginal cost. This is...

In optimal stopping problems, decision makers are assumed to search randomly to learn the utility of alternatives; in contrast, in one-shot multi-attribute utility optimization, decision makers are assumed to have perfect knowledge of utilities. We point out that these two contexts represent the...

This paper studies competing mechanisms with limited commitment over infinite horizon. Between a mechanism and the agent, there is perfect monitoring, but each mechanism can have arbitrary signals about the interaction between other mechanisms and the agent. I show that if the agent’s type is...

A seller has one unit to sell using an English auction mechanism similar to internet auction markets, such as eBay. Bidders appear according to a random arrival process. The seller chooses a reserve price and duration for each auction. If the reserve is not met, the seller passes in the object...

In this note I show that the equilibrium in cutoff strategies observed in auctions with a buy-it-now price may also arise in markets where objects are sold simultaneously by auctions and posted prices. However, contrary to auctions with a buy-it-now price where buyers need to know only the total...