We investigate the marketing practice of framing a price as a discount from an earlier price. We discuss two reasons why a discounted price---rather than a merely low price---can make a consumer more willing to purchase. First, a high initial price can indicate the product is high quality....

This paper analyzes the incentives of a seller to provide (un)biased and (im)precise advice about a complex product such as insurance, banking and telecommunication services. Misleading the buyers by biasing the advice upwards increases the revenues but also the expected fine imposed by the...

This is a preliminary draft of an Invited Symposium paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society to be held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and 'standard' economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can...

In this article we propose a two stage procedure to model demand decisions by customers who are balancing several dimensions of a product. We then test our procedure by analyzing the behavior of buyers from an Austrian price comparison site. Although in such a market a consumer will typically...

Using a comprehensive panel data set on U.S. households, we study the effects of the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), the most substantive reform of personal bankruptcy in the United States since the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. The 2005 legislation...

We are interested in evaluating the impact of restrictive planning regulation on entry into the UK grocery retail industry. We estimate a model similar to Bresnahan and Reiss (1991) where we allow for multiple store formats. We find that more restrictive planning regulation reduces the number of...

We develop a model of competition between retailer chains with a structural estimation of the demand and supply in the supermarket industry in France. In the model, supermarkets compete in price and brand offer over all food products to attract consumers, in particular through the share of...

How does an upstream firm determine the size of its distribution network, and what is the role of vertical restraints? To address these questions we develop and estimate two models of outlet entry, starting from the basic trade-off between market expansion and fixed costs. In the coordinated...

We present the first empirical estimation of a structural model taking into account explicitly the endogenous buyer power of downstream players facing two part tariffs contracts offered by the upstream level. We consider vertical contracts between manufacturers and retailers where resale price...

We estimate a dynamic profit-maximization model of a fish wholesaler who can observe consumer characteristics, set individual prices, and thus engage in third-degree price discrimination. Simulated prices and quantities from the model exhibit the key features observed in a set of high quality...