This article analyzes the market for experience goods when the product's quality is uncertain. Unlike the case of certain product quality, in this setting, a customer who receives a bad product cannot automatically infer that the producer has "cheated." In this two-period model, producers select...

Software piracy by users is generally believed to harm both software firms (through lower profits) and buying customers (through higher prices). Thus, it is thought that perfect and costless technological protection would benefit both firms and consumers. The model developed here suggests that...