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...

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...

A common myth/conception, based upon the notion of increasing returns to scale in R&D activity, is that large firms account for a disproportionate share of innovations. In this paper we consider three types of informational returns to scale (cheaper, faster, and better) and examine the impact of...

When managing a project with uncertain completion time and unobservable contractor's work rate, self-interest can create conflicts between the project manager and the contractor leading to actions that reduce the profits of both. We first investigate how the concept of supply contract...

When managing projects with considerable uncertainty, such as those arising in construction, defense, and new product development, it is customary for a manufacturer (project manager) to offer contracts under which each supplier (contractor) receives a prespecified payment when she completes her...

When managing a project, a firm must evaluate multiple strategic factors and operational issues before deciding which tasks to keep in-house and which to outsource. We focus on one operational aspect of this evaluation process by examining the impact of different sourcing decisions of project...

type="main" <p>We study the interaction between a group of agents who exert effort to complete a project and a manager who chooses its objectives. The manager has limited commitment power so that she can commit to the objectives only when the project is sufficiently close to completion. We show...</p>

In this paper we study a model that minimizes the sum of production, employment smoothing, and inventory costs subject to a schedule of known demand requirements over a finite time horizon. The three instrumental variables are work force producing at regular-time, work force producing on...