We analyze the effects of asymmetric switching costs on two identical firms that produce an homogeneous good and compete in prices. Both firms inherit a fraction of the market which is “locked-in” by the switching costs. When switching costs are low, firms face a tradeoff between charging a...

We study the informational role of prices in a stochastic environment. We provide a closed-form solution of the monopoly problem when the price imperfectly signals quality to the uninformed buyers. We then study the effect of noise on output, market price, information flows, and expected...

We present a diagrammatic and step-by-step analysis of price signaling quality. Because quality is a continuum on the real positive line, out-of-equilibrium beliefs need not be specified, i.e., every positive price is a positive outcome in equilibrium. We first study the behavior of the monopoly...

We study learning in perfect competition. A representative price-taking firm sells a good whose quality is unknown to some buyers. The uninformed buyers use the price to infer information about quality. Even though the firm is a price-taker, information is disseminated though the price. It is...

We study the informational role of prices. To that end, we consider the framework of a dominant firm with a competitive fringe. When the competitive fringe is large enough, there exists a unique fully revealing equilibrium, in which the price conveys full information about the quality of the...

In this paper, we analyze the interaction between an incumbent firm's financial contract with abank and its product market decisions in the face of the threat of entry, in a dynamic model.The main results of the paper are: there exists a separating equilibrium with no limit pricing; thelow-cost...