In this paper we examine the behavior of a firm that produces a product with a privately-observed safety attribute; that is, consumers cannot observe directly the product's safety. The firm may, at a cost, disclose its safety prior to sale; alternatively, if a firm does not disclose its safety...

We analyze a sample of consumer-electronics products sold by the US NewEgg online-retailer to study the impact of Price Matching Guarantees (PMGs) policies on prices. By applying aDifference-in-Differences approach,we find that prices of the policy-adopting retailer increase by 4.7% during the...

Firms communicate product quality attributes to consumers through a variety of channels, such as pricing, advertising, releases of research reports and test results, or warranties and returns policies. The conceptualization of the economics of such communication is that it takes on one of two...

We examine the interplay of imperfect competition and incomplete information in the context of price competition among firms producing horizontally- and vertically-differentiated substitute products. We find that incomplete information about vertical quality (e.g., consumer satisfaction), which...

How does the need to signal quality through price affect equilibrium pricing and profits, when a firm faces a similarly-situated rival? In this paper, we provide a model of non-cooperative signaling by two firms that compete over a continuum of consumers. We assume "universal incomplete...

We analyze a sample of consumer-electronics products sold by the US NewEgg online-retailer to study the impact of Price Matching Guarantees (PMGs) policies on prices. By applying aDifference-in-Differences approach,we find that prices of the policy-adopting retailer increase by 4.7% during the...

The single crossing assumption simplifies the analysis of screening models as local incentive compatibility becomes sufficient for global incentive compatibility. If single crossing is violated, global incentive compatibility constraints have to be taken into account. This paper studies monotone...

This article investigates how a privately-informed seller could signal her type by gathering information about the buyer's match value. We study two alternative ways to obtain information. In the first one, labeled information acquisition, the seller can acquire exogenous signals by facing a...

We study a screening model in which agents can under-utilize goods. We characterize implementable and optimal contracts and show that, whenever the principal values usage instrumentally, the optimal menu involves multi-part tariffs with tiers of zero marginal prices. We apply our results to...

We consider a seller who can sell her product over two periods, advance and spot. The seller has private information about the product quality, which is unknown to customers in advance and publicly revealed in spot. The question we consider is whether the seller has an incentive to signal...