When an improvable durable good (such as packaged software) saturates the market, the seller could be tempted to release new versions too frequently, hurting her profit. A novel contractual device, which we term as a Free New Version Rights warranty (Free NVR warranty), can help the seller...

We study a model of film distribution and consumption. The studio can release two goods, a theatrical and a video version, and has to decide on its versioning and sequencing strategy. In contrast with the previous literature, we allow for the possibility that some consumers may watch both...

Critics have long faulted the wide-spread practice of trade promotions as wasteful. It has been estimated that this practice adds up to $100 billion worth of inventory to the distribution system. Yet the practice continues. In this paper, we propose a price-discrimination model of trade...

This paper studies optimal nonlinear pricing for a monopolist when consumers' preferences exhibit temptation and self-control as in Gul and Pesendorfer (2001a). Consumers are subject to temptation inside the store but exercise self-control, and those foreseeing large self-control costs do not...

Based on the critical assumption of strategic complementarity, this paper builds a general model to describe and solve the screening problem faced by the monopolist seller of a network good. By applying monotone comparative static tools, we demonstrate that the joint presence of asymmetric...

We analyze a model of monopolistic price discrimination where only some consumers are originally sufficiently informed about their preferences, e.g., about their future demand for a utility such as electricity or telecommunication. When more consumers become informed, we show that this benefits...

The traditional avoidance literature undeservedly neglects tax base distribution as a factor affecting the avoidance price, and generally assumed to be equal to the avoidance cost. In reality, avoidance providers are usually either high-skilled specialists or insiders. The strong collusion thus,...

This paper studies a bilateral trade game where (i) the buyer is uncertain about her desired consumption amount (needs) of a perfectly divisible good and receives a signal about it, (ii) and the seller posts a take-it-or-leave-it price to the buyer. The seller's information design trades off...

A data broker sells market segmentations created by consumer data to a producer with private production cost who sells a product to a unit mass of consumers with heterogeneous values. In this setting, I completely characterize the revenue-maximizing mechanisms for the data broker. In particular,...