I study the institution of avoiding to hire one’s school own PhD graduates for assistant professorships. I argue that this institution is necessary to create better incentives for researchers to incorporate new information in studies, facilitating the convergence to asymptotic learning of the...

I study the institution of avoiding hiring one’s own Ph.D. graduates for assistant professorships. I argue that this institution is necessary to create better incentives for researchers to incorporate new information in studies, facilitating the convergence to asymptotic learning of the...

As online information availability for products and services is increasing and as buyers engage in more online search prior to purchase decisions, it is becoming more important for firms to know when to invest to reduce buyer uncertainty. This article argues that today's firms should view...

This paper examines one of the most important marketing strategies by software producers on the Internet. That is whether to offer free samples and if so, whether to list the samples on shareware repositories. I show that firms with higher value products have a greater incentive to offer free...

We develop a model of search among substitutes for the best combination of commodity variant and price, in which the structure of search costs can be manipulated by the suppliers of these variants, e.g. by joining an existing market or opening a new one. We analyse the subgame perfect equilibria...

I develop a model of rent seeking with informational foundations and an arbitrary number of rent seekers, and I compare the results with Tullock's (1980) classic model where the influence activities are "black-boxed." Given the microfoundations, the welfare consequences of rent seeking can be...

A firm chooses a price and the product information it discloses to a consumer whose tastes are privately known. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the match function for full disclosure to be the unique equilibrium outcome whatever the costs and prior beliefs about product and...

I develop a model of rent seeking with informational foundations and an arbitrary number of rent seekers, and I compare the results with Tullock's (1980) classic model where the influence activities are "black-boxed." Given the microfoundations, the welfare consequences of rent seeking can be...

We consider a heretofore unexplored explanation for why platforms, such as Internet service providers, might impose download limits on content consumers: doing so increases the degree to which those consumers view content providers’ products as substitutes. This, in turn, intensifies the...