Geographical concentration of stores that sell similar commodities is pervasive. To analyze this phenomenon, this paper provides a simple two dimensional spatial competition model with consumer taste uncertainty. Given taste uncertainty, concentration of stores attracts more consumers since more...

We examine a firm that can license its production technology to a rival when firms are heterogeneous in production costs. We show that a complete technology transfer from one firm to another always increases joint profit under weakly concave demand when at least three firms remain in the...

In many industries, firms reward their customers for making referrals. We analyze the optimal policy mix of price, advertising intensity, and referral fee for monopoly when buyers choose to what extent to refer other consumers to the firm. We find that the firm uses its referral fee, but not its...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

We consider the optimal pricing and referral strategy of a monopoly that uses a simple consumer communication network (a chain) to spread product information. The first-best policy with fully discriminatory position-based referral fees involves standard monopoly pricing and referral fees that...

Which issues are discussed by candidates in an election campaign? Why are some issues never discussed? Model tractability is lost quickly when dealing with these questions, partly because of the multidimensional voting inherent in models of multiple issues. Our model features two candidates for...

Price advertisement by retail stores is pervasive. If there exist non-negligible costs of consumer search, a retailer can increase the number of consumers visiting its location by advertising a low price, thus increasing consumers' expected utilities from search. If the increase in the number of...

Markets are often characterized with firms of differing capabilities with more efficient firms licensing their technology to lesser firms.  We  examine the effects that the amount of the technology transferred, and the characteristics of the partner have on this licensing.  We find that a...

This paper compares the equilibrium outcomes in search markets with and without referrals. Although it seems clear that consumers would benefit from referrals, it is not at all clear whether firms would unilaterally provide information about competing offers since such information could...

Joint production between rival firms often entails knowledge transfers without direct compensation, leaving the question as to why more efficient firms would give their rivals such an advantage.  We find that such transfers are credible mechanisms to make the market more competitive so as to...