To explore the relationship between spatial location and quality differentiation, we build a dataset of over 30,000 restaurants rated by TripAdvisor, across large UK cities. Whereas top-rated restaurants tend to locate close to other top restaurants, bottom-rated restaurants tend to locate away...

The organizational form of franchising has been shown to yield higher profits and faster growth through reducing agency costs. Why then does anyone not franchise? In this paper, I argue that the diffuse residual claims of the franchise system reduce overall system quality, and that this problem...