Multi-unit ownership and branding are separate decisions and non-consumer audiences can affect both. In this study we distinguish between the branding and chaining decisions of nursing homes, while measuring the effects of litigation and labor unions on these decisions. Chaining (independent of...

A monopolist is treated as a nexus of contracts with team production. It has one ownermanager. The owner-manager is the employer of two employees. A team production problem is present if the employer is a "managerial lemon". If the team production problem is solved, the employer is a "managerial...

A monopolist is treated as a nexus of contracts with team production. It has one ownermanager. The owner-manager is the employer of two employees. A team production problem is present if the employer is a "managerial lemon". If the team production problem is solved, the employer is a "managerial...

Strategic interactions between two-sided platforms depend not only on whether their decision variables are strategic complements or substitutes as for one-sided firms, but also - and crucially so - on whether or not the platforms subsidize one side of the market in equilibrium. For example, with...

This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the determination of firms’ and industries’ innovative activity and performance, highlighting the questions addressed, the approaches adopted, impediments to progress in the field, and research opportunities. We review the...

Multi-sided platforms (MSPs), which bring together two or more interdependent groups of customers, have recently risen to economic and business prominence in many industries. This paper first lays out a simple micro-founded framework which aims to organize academic and managerial thinking about...

This paper provides a first pass at clarifying the economic tradeoffs between two polar strategies for market intermediation: the merchant mode, in which the intermediary buys from sellers and resells to buyers; and the two-sided platform mode, under which the intermediary enables affiliated...

Why are higher quality niches seen as intrinisically more profitable in business circles? Why do high quality products sometimes have a low real price, while it is unusual to see low quality products with high real prices? Can markets have quality differentiation as well as quality bunching? How...