This paper addresses the role of product liability for the emergence and development of smart products such as autonomous vehicles (AVs). We analyze how the liability regime affects innovative activities, as well as the timing of market introduction and market penetration of such smart products....

This paper explores the impact of product liability on vertical product differentiation when product safety is perfectly observable. In a two-stage competition, duopolistic firms are subject to strict liability and segment the market such that a low-safety product is marketed at a low price to...

We contrast alternative liability rules for social control of product risks when heterogeneous consumers considering purchasing a durable good due to cognitive errors and biases mispredict future product benefits and, thus, the extent of future product usage. Since the expected consumer harm...

Public authorities in many jurisdictions are concerned about the proliferation of illegal content and products on online platforms. In this paper, we provide an economic appraisal of platform liability that highlights the effects of a stricter liability rule on several key variables such as...

We study a platformâs incentives to delist IP-infringing products and the effects of holding the platform liable for the presence of such products on innovation and consumer welfare. For a given number of buyers, platform liability increases innovation by reducing the competitive pressure faced...

The paper's objective is to assess price discrimination in magazine subscriptions in the Brazilian market. Oster and Scott-Morton (2005) had advanced a price discrimination mechanism in which the ratio between subscription and newsstand prices would be positively associated to the extent that a...

Platforms often use fee discrimination within their marketplace (e.g., Amazon, eBay, and Uber specify a variety of merchant fees). To better understand the impact of marketplace fee discrimination, we develop a model that allows us to determine equilibrium fee and category decisions that depend...

In this study, we investigate behavioral constraints on pricing by using a novel laboratory experiment in which actual consumption goods are traded. We test different models and provide several insights into pricing and reactions to price discrimination. First, we identify the extent to which...

The unprecedented access of firms to consumer level data not only facilitates more precisely targeted individual pricing but also alters firms' strategic incentives. We show that exclusive access to a list of consumers can provide incentives for a firm to endogenously assume the price leader's...

The movement to deregulate major industries over the past 40 years has produced large efficiency gains. However, distributional effects have been more difficult to assess. In the electricity sector, deregulation has vastly increased information available to market participants through the...