When customers face financing frictions, they can retain suppliers through nonmonetary incentives, such as sharing their technology, thereby fostering supplier innovation. Using customer-supplier pairs in the U.S., we find that suppliers of customers who violate covenants become more innovative,...

We study how firms decide whether to continue an existing relationship or switch the vendor of outsourced services. Because of incomplete contracts and relationship-specific investments, client organizations may face switching costs, which in some cases may be large enough to render vendor...

Extending a brand beyond its original product category is a major strategy for long-term profitability. A brand owner can internalize the development of the extension product, or license the brand to an external partner in order to exploit the licensee's better capabilities and higher efficiency...

In the last few decades, a valuation of intangible assets is an activity of particular importance, not only because of growing number of transactions with intangibles but for accurate financial reporting as well. In this discipline, a special area is dedicated to the research of different...

Given potential abuse, conflicts of interest, and other issues, why do companies routinely pay for their managers to entertain the managers of other firms and allow their own managers to be so entertained? An answer that such practices facilitate inter-firm cooperation is incomplete because it...

Extending a brand beyond its original product category is a major strategy for long-term profitability. A brand owner can internalize the development of the extension product, or license the brand to an external partner in order to exploit the licensee’s better capabilities and higher...

The paper explains why some firms transfer their technology to competitors without direct compensation. We consider a Hotelling market where duopolists sell products with different qualities. This market consists of heterogeneous consumers, comprising two groups in terms of their valuations of...

By combining a theory of herding behavior with the phenomenon of availability heuristic, this paper shows that non-informative advertisements can affect people’s choices by influencing their perception of product quality. We present a model in which people can learn about product quality by...

This paper studies the impact of income inequality on the level of innovative activities in a model where innovations result in quality improvements. The market for quality goods is characterized by a natural oligopoly with three types of consumers - rich, middle class and poor. In general, we...