We show that the entry of a second firm in a horizontally differentiated market (ala Hotelling) may harm consumers as prices increase and consumer's surplus possibly decrease. We first derive the price and the consumer's surplus of a monopoly which is located at the center of the market. When a...

We provide an explanation for product versioning that is not driven by differential costs or consumer preference heterogeneity, and investigate its implications. Consumers care whether a product they own is better than that owned by others, and whether others own a better product than them....

We devise a tractable model to study the buyer's bid double auction (BBDA) that allows correlated signals and interdependent values/costs. We demonstrate that simple, easily calculated equilibria exist in small markets. We prove that the incentive for strategic behavior vanishes at a O (1/η)...