Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyze how his decision...

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyse how his decision...

Firms choose debt structure and competing banks choose monitoring intensity. Monitoring improves credit allocation, but creates informational lock-in effects in bank-borrower relationships. In a competitive credit market, banks dissipate anticipated profit from serving locked-in borrowers...

This paper surveys empirical and theoretical studies of various control mechanisms embedded in venture capital contracts. These mechanisms mitigate incentive problems and opportunistic behavior arising in the uncertain environment of financing young hightechnology enterprises that predominantly...

In some industries, monopoly is natural. One provider can serve the relevant demand cheaper than two or more firms. If the monopoly is not contestable, i.e. not controlled by a credible threat of entry, regulation is necessary. The essential facilities doctrine is one such regulatory tool. It...

We experimentally examine the impact of a cycle path on the trading of a copyable information good in networks. A cycle path in a network permits a buyer to become a reseller that can compete against existing sellers by replicating the good. Theory predicts that the price of the information...

This paper studies an industry in which firms can choose to provide open or closed platforms. Open platforms, as opposed to closed, are extendable so third-party producers can develop extensions for them. Building on a two-sided market model, I show that firms might prefer to commit to keeping...

Usury is a frequent occurrence in consumer credit markets and particularly affects low-income households. Although the term usury conjures images of a greedy individual consciously acting to exploit the weak bargaining position of another by deceitful and even fraudulent means, we consider it as...

Usury is a frequent occurrence in consumer credit markets and particularly affects low-income households. Although the term usury conjures images of a greedy individual consciously acting to exploit the weak bargaining position of another by deceitful and even fraudulent means, we consider it as...

We solve for the optimal mechanism for selling two goods when the buyer's demand characteristics are unobservable. In the case of substitutable goods, the seller has an incentive to offer lotteries over goods in order to charge the buyers with large differences in the valuations a higher price...