The uniform pricing puzzle for vertically differentiated products states that a monopolist sells high and low quality products at the same price despite the fact that quality is perfectly observable and that there are no significant costs of adjusting prices. The puzzle is relevant for movies,...

Buying frenzies in which a firm intentionally undersupplies a product during its initial launch phase are a common practice within several industries such as electronics (cell phones, video games, game consoles), luxury cars, and fashion goods. We develop a dynamic model of buying frenzies that...

We characterize the effect of anticipated regret on consumer decisions and on firm profits and policies in an advance selling context where buyers have uncertain valuations. Advance purchases trigger <i>action regret</i> if valuations turn out to be lower than the price paid, whereas delaying purchase...

Concert tickets can be sold at the same price or at different prices that reflect different seating categories. Price discrimination generates about 5% greater revenues than single-price ticketing. The return to price discrimination is higher in markets with greater demand heterogeneity, as...

There is little evidence in support of the main economic rationale for regulating athletic doping: that doping reduces fan interest. The introduction of random testing for performance-enhancing drugs (PED) by Major League Baseball (MLB) offers unique data to investigate the issue. The...

We study price discrimination where consumers know at the time of contracting only the distribution of their valuations but subsequently learn their actual valuations. Consumers are sequentially screened, as in a menu of refund contracts. Initial valuation uncertainty can differ in terms of...

The compensation of a professor who is awarded an internal Canada Research Chair (CRC) increases by 6.3 percent on average in our sample. This gain is large initially but quickly erodes over CRC tenure. The gain is slightly larger for professors who change university to obtain a CRC Chair....

Using data from a large, U.S. federal job training program, we investigate whether enrolment incentives that exogenously vary the 'shadow prices' for serving different demographic subgroups of clients influence case workers' intake decisions. We show that case workers enroll more clients from...

Using a variety of data sources, the contributors explore how performance standards and incentives affect the behavior of public managers and agency employees, their approaches to service delivery, and ultimately, the outcomes for participants.