Information goods are essentially public goods as soon as they are made available in digital form on the Internet. Therefore, firms (or providers) of informations goods are forced to consider alternative payment schemes to eliminate the free rider problem. The present paper introduces a...

Within a production theoretic framework, this paper considers an axiomatic approach to benchmark selection. It is shown that two simple and weak axioms: efficiency and comprehensive monotonicity characterize a natural family of benchmarks which typically becomes unique. Further axioms are added...

In the present paper, the existence of maximal elements for binary relations are studied. Generalized lexicographic relations are introduced, and some results on existence of maximal elements are provided. A simple example shows that economies with "lexicographic consumers" need not have...