New technology is usually expensive and it takes time for manufacturers to make the technology more accessible. In the stereo industry, the first Super Audio Compact Disk (SACD) player made by Sony, SCD-1, sold for $5,000 in 1999; in 2002 the cheapest of Sony's new SACD players, SCD-CE775, had a...

This paper examines the dynamic pricing problem of a durable-good monopolist when product quality is endogenous. It is shown that the relationship between the firm's quality choice and the time-inconsistency problem crucially depends on how the unit production cost varies with quality. The...

In this paper I first present a new convergence result which will derive an optimal auction mechanism as a limit of standard nonlinear pricing mechanisms. For example, an optimal auction mechanism of Myerson (1981) will be explicitly derived as a limit of nonlinear pricing mechanisms by Mussa...

A modern firm often employs multiple production technologies based on distinct engineering principles, causing non-convexities in the firm's unit cost as a function of product quality. Extending the model of Mussa and Rosen (1978), this paper investigates how a monopolist's product line design...

Existence of monotone pure strategy equilibrium is established in the discriminatory and uniform S + a-th price (a in [0, 1]) auctions of S identical objects when bidders are risk-neutral with independent signals. The model requires discrete price / quantity grids and allows for...

We examine a dynamic, durable goods model. A monopolist faces two types of consumers who value the monopolist’s goods differently. The quality of the good improves over time and an improvement is only valuable to consumers if they have previous improvements. In each period, the monopolist can...

This paper looks at the inter-temporal price discrimination game that arises when a monopolist faces naïve-time-inconsistent consumers. En route to solving this game, we introduce two new solution concepts for dynamic games where some players are time inconsistent. The first solution concept is...

Wilson (1987) criticizes the existing literature of game theory as relying too much on common-knowledge assumptions. In reaction to Wilson's critique, the recent literature of mechanism design has started to employ stronger solution concepts such as dominant strategy incentive compatibility, and...

The Spence model (1975) is extended so that customers’ utility depends on their disposition to the firm in addition to quantity and quality of the good consumed. Disposition is determined by customers’ perception of firm’s pricing and quality decisions, which perception is...