Using data from American magazines, we explore the relationship between subscription discounts and magazine characteristics. We focus in particular on those magazine features that might lead time-inconsistent consumers to wish to engage in commitment behavior. We find that for magazines whose...

Recent literature tried to explain the Indian growth miracle in different ways, ranging from trade liberalization to industrial reforms. Using data on Indian manufacturing firms, this paper analyzes the relationship between firm's productivity and export market participation during 1991–2004....

The uniform pricing puzzle for vertically differentiated products states that a monopolist sells high and low quality products at the same price despite the fact that quality is perfectly observable and that there are no significant costs of adjusting prices. The puzzle is relevant for movies,...

We construct a model where incumbents can either acquire basic innovations from entrepreneurs, or wait and acquire developed innovations from entrepreneurial firms supported by venture capitalists. We show that venture-backed entrepreneurial firms have an incentive to overinvest in development...

We develop a theory of innovation for entry and sale into oligopoly, and show that an invention of higher quality is more likely to be sold (or licensed) to an incumbent due to strategic product market effects on the sales price. Preemptive acquisitions by incumbents are shown to stimulate the...

Economists have shown that large and persistent differences in productivity levels across businesses are ubiquitous. This finding has shaped research agendas in a number of fields, including (but not limited to) macroeconomics, industrial organization, labor, and trade. This paper surveys and...

When will a monopolist have incentives to foreclose a complementary market by degrading compatibility/interoperability of his products with those of rivals? We develop a framework where leveraging extracts more rents from the monopoly market by "restoring" second degree price discrimination. In...

Economists have often argued that "pay for performance" is the optimal compensation scheme. However, use of the simplest form of pay for performance, the piece rate, has been in decline in manufacturing in recent decades. We show both theoretically and empirically that these changes are due to...

The economic value of upstream research outcomes has raised increasing attention. Not only are these outcomes central to the development of many innovations, but they are also the object of many transactions in technology. This note discusses a few representative papers that try to better...

A critical issue facing a number of colleges and universities is how to allocate first year places to incoming students. The decision to admit students is often based on a number of factors, but a key statistic is a student's high school grades. This paper reports on a case study of the...