This paper is the first to examine the effect of minimum price guaranteesin a sequential search model. Minimum price guarantees are notadvertised and only known to consumers when they come to the shop.We show that in such an environment, minimum price guarantees increasethe value of buying the...

We model the idea that when consumers search for products, they first visit the firm whose advertising is more salient. The gains a firm derives from being visited early increase in search costs, so equilibrium advertising increases as search costs rise. This may result in lower firm profits...

We study two aspects of globalization. It allows a decision-maker to go beyond his own local experience and to learn from other decision-makers in addressing common problems. This improves the identification and diffusion of best practices. It also provides extra information to `markets' that...

We theoretically and experimentally study voter behavior in a setting characterized by plurality rule and mandatory voting, where voters choose from three options. We are interested in the occurrence of strategic voting in an environment where Condorcet cycles may occur. In particular, we focus...

We provide a game theoretic analysis of how power shapes the clarity of communication. We analyze information transmission in a cheap talk bargaining game between an informed Sender and an uninformed Receiver. Theoretically, we find that the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted...

Currently no refinement exists that successfully selects equilibria across a wider range of Cheap Talk games. We propose a generalization of refinements based on credible deviations, such as neologism proofness and announcement proofness. According to our Average Credible Deviation Criterion...

This study analyses 1400 research projects of the top 20 R&D-spending pharmaceuticals to identify the determinants of successful research projects. We provide clear evidence that externally sourced projects and projects involving biotechnologies perform better than internal projects and chemical...

Policies need not only to be well designed to effectively address market failures, but their parameters also need to be part of agents’ information sets. This is illustrated by government student loans in the Netherlands which are intended to alleviate liquidity constraints. Despite generous...

This paper looks into the search behavior of consumers in the market for health insurance contracts. We consider the recent health insurance reform in The Netherlands, where a private-public mix of insurance provision was replaced by a system based on managed competition. Although all insurers...

This paper studies the incentives to merge in a Bertrand competition model where firms sell differentiatedproducts and consumers search for satisfactory deals. In the pre-merger symmetricequilibrium, the probability that a firm is the next one to be visited by a consumer is equal acrossfirms not...