We consider a durable-good monopolist that periodically introduces new models, each new model representing an improvement upon its predecessor. We show that if the monopolist is able neither to exercise planned obsolescence (i.e., artificially shorten the lift of its products) nor to give...

In this article, I analyze price competition under price inertia. After setting prices, sellers are unable to change them for a period of predetermined length, but may delay price commitments indefinitely. Although most consumers consider the firms' products to be perfect substitutes, an...

The Ghemawat and Nalebuff (1985) exit model is extended to include an entry stage. Demand is high at the time of entry but is expected to eventually decline. It is shown that equilibrium entry decisions may be critically affected by the prospect of a future decline in demand, even when the...

We examine the diffusion of a hardware/software system. For such systems there is interdependence between the hardware-adoption decisions of consumers and the supply decisions of software manufacturers. Hence there can be bottlenecks to the diffusion of the system. We consider the CD industry...

We study the design of incentives in a firm in which cooperation among workers is important. Since cooperation is not observed, the firm is unable to reward workers for it. Workers may, nonetheless, cooperate because they derive direct utility from cooperation. This utility is endogenously...

We consider a repeated duopoly game where each firm privately chooses its investment in quality, and realized quality is a noisy indicator of the firm's investment.We focus on turnover equilibria in which a low-quality realization is penalized by lowering future demand of the firm that delivered...