Many durable products provide value only when used together with contingent services or consumable components, e.g. light fixtures (bulbs), printers (ink), electronics (batteries). Consumers need only have access to the contingent consumable components to continue to derive service from a...

We present a model to address in a unified manner four ways in which a monopolist can interfere with secondary markets. In the model, consumers have heterogeneous valuations for quality so that used-good markets play an allocative role. Our results are the following: (1) In contracts to Swan's...

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...

It has been recognized that when a durable goods manufacturer sells her output, she has an incentive to produce at a rate that will drive down the market price of her product over time. Because anticipation of declining prices makes consumers less willing to invest in owning the durable good,...

While selling an existing product, a durable-goods monopolist may develop a new, improved product. The firm must consider the interaction between its intertemporal pricing and research and development (R&D) decisions. The interactions show a sharp dichotomy depending on pricing regimes. When it...

A durable-goods model, which allows consumers' values to vary over time, is analyzed. The optimal mechanism for a monopolist is computed and compared to both the sales and leasing equilibria. It is shown that sales may implement the optimal strategy, and that the dominance of leasing over sales...

This note re-examines the previous results on durable goods monopolists under the time inconsistency problem that the firm tends to make its goods less compatible as a “planned obsolescence” strategy in the presence of network effects. We find that the possibility of the commitment to...