We study the effects of horizontal mergers when firms compete on quality and price. Two key factors are identified: (i) the magnitude of variable quality costs, and (ii) the relative magnitudes of cross-quality and cross-price effects on demand. The merging firms will increase (reduce) both...

Using a spatial competition framework with three ex ante identical firms, we study the effects of a horizontal merger on quality, price and welfare. The merging firms always reduce quality. They also increase prices if demand responsiveness to quality is sufficiently low. The non-merging firm,...

We study the effects of horizontal mergers when firms compete on quality and price. Two key factors are identified: (i) the magnitude of variable quality costs, and (ii) the relative magnitudes of cross-quality and cross-price effects on demand. The merging firms will increase (reduce) both...

We embed the principal-agent model in a model of spatial differentiation with correlated consumer preferences to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing and quality allocation (PPQ), whereby duopoly firms charge different prices and offer different qualities to different...

Asymmetric information can distort market outcomes. I study how the online disclosure of information affects consumers' behavior and firms' incentives to upgrade product quality in markets where information is traditionally limited. I first build a model of consumer search with firms' endogenous...

We analyze how sellers of used construction equipment sort products between online and offline auctions based on the quality and transparency of different machine attributes. Sellers are more likely to offer machines online if quality is high for attributes whose integrity can be measured via...

We develop an analytical framework to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing technologies (PP). These technologies enable first-degree price discrimination: firms charge different prices to different consumers, based on their willingness to pay. We first show that, even...

We show that as nonbanks' market share increases in a local residential mortgage market, the quality of mortgage services in the market improves. Two instrumental variable analyses exploiting (1) stress tests conducted by the Federal Reserve, and (2) mortgage industry surety bonds required by...