The author reexamines the Schmalensee effect from a dynamic perspective. Schmalsensee’s argument suggesting that high quality can be signaled by high prices is based on the assumption that higher quality necessarily incurs higher production cost. In this paper, the author argues that firms...

In this paper, the authors provide a rationale for why firms issue gift cards or vouchers. Mainly, issuing gift cards can be considered as a collusion-facilitating practice. A firm that issues gift cards can raise its price for several reasons. First, the discounted price by the face value of...

In this paper, we consider two firms diffusing incompatible technologies and their decision of consumer targeting. The technology adoption is made in two steps. First, once the firms sell their products to their respective targeted consumer, the technology is diffused successively by...

The authors reexamine the Schmalensee effect from a dynamic perspective. Schmalsensee’s argument suggesting that high quality can be signaled by high prices is based on the assumption that higher quality necessarily incurs higher production cost. In this paper, the authors argue that firms...

Is it better to apply effort to increase personal consumption, or control what one wants? The model presented here provides a characterization of demand for self control, namely, its responsiveness to price and risk. Unlike most other models of self control, the model does not identify self...