We consider a model of a TV oligopoly where TV channels transmit advertising and viewers dislike such commercials. We show that advertisers make a lower profit the larger the number of TV channels. If TV channels are sufficiently close substitutes, there will be underprovision of advertising...

Economists have emphasized the role of dissipative advertising and price as signals of quality. Most works, however, limit the number of types to two options: high and low quality. Yet, production costs and quality both result from R&D efforts and therefore are both uncertain. I characterize the...

In a market environment with random detection of product quality, a firm can employ umbrella branding as a strategy to convince consumers of the high quality of its products. Alternatively, a firm can rely on external certification of the quality of one or both of its products. We characterize...

This article tests experimentally whether a high degree of collusion on advertisement expenditures facilitate tacit price collusion in duopoly markets. Two environments are tested, in which the size of the spillover between advertising expenditures is varied. The results show that the...

We model and analyze strategic interaction over time in a duopolis-tic market. Each period the firms independently and simultaneously choose whether to advertise or not. Advertising increases the own immediate sales, but may also cause an externality, e.g., increase or decrease the immediate...

We analyze the strategic behavior of firms when demand is determined by a rule of thumb behavior of consumers. We assume consumer dynamics where individual consumers follow simple behavioral decision rules governed by imitation and habit as suggested in consumer research. On this basis, we...

We propose a duopoly model of competition between internet search engines endowed with different technologies and study the effects of an agreement where the more advanced firm shares its technology with the inferior one. We show that the superior firm enters the agreement only if it results in...

Die Bedeutung von Emotionen und Affekten bei ökonomischen Entscheidungen wird seit mehreren Jahren in der ökonomischen Literatur diskutiert (z. B. Rabin, 1998). Eine Erklärung der empirischen Evidenz in diesem Bereich, die über eine bloß phänomenologische Ebene hinausgeht, verlangt eine...

Within the last three years, Google has acquired YouTube and DoubleClick and has attempted to control part of Yahoo!'s search advertising business. Two of the deals have not raised antitrust concerns by competition authorities. I review these deals with a focus on consumer welfare. Consumers are...

We show how increased competition in a media market may have implications for the competition between firms that are advertising in that medium. We apply a simple model of a product market with network externalities where firms buy advertising space in a media market and find that there is more...