We analyze the implications of a market imperfection related to the inability to establish intellectual property rights, that we label {\it unverifiable communication}. Employees are able to collude with external parties selling ``knowledge capital'' of the firm. The firm organizer engages in...

We consider an entrepreneur that is the sole producer of a cost reducing skill, but the entrepreneur that hires a team to use the skill cannot prevent collusive trade for the innovation related knowledge between employees and competitors. We show that there are two types of diffusion avoiding...

We propose a new econometric estimation method for analyzing the probability of leaving unemployment using uncompleted spells from repeated cross-section data, which can be especially useful when panel data are not available. The proposed method-of-moments-based estimator has two important...

We formulate a knowlegde--based model of direct investment through mergers and acquisitions. M&As are realized to create comparative advantages by exploiting international synergies and appropriating local technology spillovers requiring geographical proximity, but can also represent a strategic...

Two-stage game models of information acquisition in stochastic oligopolies require the unrealistic assumption that firms observe the precision of information chosen by their competitors before determining quantities. This paper analyzes secret information acquisition as a one-stage game....

The spectacular failure of top-rated structured finance products has brought renewed attention to the conflicts of interest of Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs). We model both the CRA conflict of understating credit risk to attract more business, and the issuer conflict of purchasing only the most...

Many revenue management (RM) industries are characterized by (a) fixed capacities in the short term (e.g., hotel rooms, seats on an airline flight), (b) homogeneous products (e.g., two airline flights between the same cities at similar times), and (c) customer purchasing decisions largely...

We analyse credit market equilibrium when banks screen loan applicants. When banks have a convex cost function of screening, a pure strategy equilibrium exists where banks optimally set interest rates at the same level as their competitors. This result complements Broecker’s (1990) analysis,...

Does ethical differentiation of products affect market behavior? We examined this issue in triopolistic experimental markets where producers set prices. One producer’s costs were higher than the others. In two treatments, the additional costs were attributed to compliance with ethical...

This paper presents a classical Cournot oligopoly model with some peculiar features: it is non--quasi--competitive as price under N-poly is greater than monopoly price; Cournot equilibrium exists and is unique with each new entry; the successive equilibria after new entries are stable under the...