Many online businesses, including most of the largest platforms, seek and provide attention. These online attention rivals provide products and features to obtain the attention of consumers and sell some of that attention, through other products and services, to merchants, developers and others...

How do rational firms respond to consumer biases? In this paper, we analyze the profit-maximizing contract design of firms if consumers have time-inconsistent preferences and are partially naive about it. We consider markets for two types of goods: goods with immediate costs and delayed benefits...

We analyze strategic relationships between buyers and sellers in markets with switching costs and dynamic uncertainty by investigating the scenario wherein a representative buyer trades with two foreign sellers located in the same foreign country. We show that, under exchange rate uncertainty,...

Revisions incorporated into the Horizontal Merger Guidelines in 2010 claim that the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission consider anticompetitive effects to product “variety” when evaluating mergers. The Guidelines do not, however, explain the methodology or tools that can...

A methodology is proposed to estimate structural models of product line competition. This methodology enables researchers to estimate demand systems accounting for the endogeneity of the mix of products available in each market, an issue which is typically ignored in the empirical literature. In...

Consumers may purchase durable goods on the basis of short-term "temptation," as well as their long-term interests. I adapt Gul and Pesendorfer's (2001) representation of self-control preferences to a market for durable goods. Consumers' temptation will increase profit, and can ameliorate a...

This paper analyzes two aspects of the standard sequential consumer search model: (1) the role of the consumer's ex ante information structure on market outcomes and search behavior; and (2) the effect of imperfect recall on market outcomes and search behavior. Simulated equilibria are generated...

This study reveals two different rationales for consumer surplus-enhancing collusion. The first model considers two competitive firms in the final product market, each with one essential patent necessary for production. The equilibrium price under collusion is lower than the price under...

In financial markets where consumers can only be reached through an advisor, product providers usually compete indirectly for consumers through commissions to advisors. Therefore, a regulatory ban on commissions may restrict this competition. We formulate a theoretical model in order to study...

Many consumers rely on professional advisors when purchasing financial products. We compare fee-based and commission-based remuneration systems for financial advisors from a total welfare perspective in a theoretical model, where advisors face transaction costs from persuading consumers of a...