The concept of a Nash equilibrium in Nash bargains, proposed in Horn and Wolinsky (1988), has become the workhorse bargaining model for predicting and estimating the division of surplus in applied analysis of bilateral oligopoly. This paper proposes a non-cooperative foundation for this...

We document a strong correlation in the brand of automobile chosen by parents and their adult children, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. This correlation could represent transmission of brand preferences across generations, or it could result from correlation in family...

The audit market's unique combination of features-its role in capital market transparency, mandated demand, and concentrated supply-means it receives considerable attention from policymakers. We explore the effects of two market scenarios that have been the focus of policy discussions: a)...

We present a model of market competition and product differentiation in which consumers' attention is drawn to the products' most salient attributes. Firms compete for consumer attention via their choices of quality and price. With salience, strategic positioning of each product affects how all...

The merger of Fleet and BankBoston in September 1999 resulted in a regional New England lending market in which only one large, universal bank remained. We explore the extent to which that merger resulted in monopoly rents for the combined entity in some niches within the regional loan market....

This paper studies the market provision of a specific type of public good: radio and television broadcasts. Its main focus is to explore the ability of the market to provide broadcasting efficiently in a world in which broadcasters earn revenues by selling time to advertisers and advertisements...

This paper explores the connection between three important threads of economic research offering different approaches to studying the dynamics of an industry with heterogeneous firms. Finite models of the form pioneered by Ericson and Pakes (1995) capture the dynamics of a finite number of...

We present a dynamic quantity setting game, where players may continuously adjust their quantity targets, but incur convex adjustment costs when they do so. These costs allow players to use quantity targets as a partial commitment device. We show that the equilibrium path of such a game is...

This paper develops search-theoretic models in which it is individually rational for firms to engage in obfuscation. It considers oligopoly competition between firms selling a homogeneous good to a population of rational consumers who incur search costs to learn each firm's price. Search costs...

Consumer auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. Data from eBay shows that compositional shifts in the items being sold, or the sellers offering these items, cannot account for this evolution. Instead, the returns to...