We provide the rationale for the existence of yes-men and no-men in an organization or a group. On one hand, a person is inclined to conform to the instruction of another, because he cannot ignore the information contained in the instruction, even though his own evidence contradicts the...

This paper explores the relationship between the firms' compatibility choice and quality improving technological progress in a static model. I demonstrate that firms' compatibility choice in anticipation of quality improving innovation critically depends on how users' expectations regarding the...

We examine the effect of competition on the incentive of firms to disclose quality to consumers before trade when information disclosure is not costless. We demonstrate that no firm will disclose information in the limit, no matter how small the disclosure cost is; that is, the market outcome...

In this paper, we consider the network as an alternative trading environment to the market. The main distinctive feature of the network transaction is the dependence of buyers' purchasing behavior, which makes all consumers not equally valuable to a seller. We characterize the optimal behavior...

Two consumers sequentially purchase at most one unit of some homogeneous good from a monopolist who knows the state of nature, either high or low. I characterize a rationing equilibrium at which the high-type monopolist produces only one unit and rations customers, whereas the low-type...

The emergence of Islamic Banks (IBs) with Sharia boards that restrict the set of permissible products and enforce prohibition of riba and gharar raises basic questions of how IB clients benefit by choosing financial services from a restricted menu of possibly higher-cost cash flows. Norms that...

This paper presents a model of quantity regulation aimed at mitigating externalities from over-use of a commons: for example, restrictions on use of automobiles, fisheries, computer networks and electronic stock quotation systems with high-frequency traders. The model provides a...

We consider the signaling role of attorney fees which have been usually assumed as exogenous in literature. We show that there exists an equilibrium in which the informed plaintiff uses both the attorney fee and the settlement demand as signals for his damage amount. If attorney service is not...

We investigate a dynamic model of network marketing in a small-world network structure artificially constructed similarly to the Watts–Strogatz network model. Different from the traditional marketing, consumers can also play the role of the manufacturer's selling agents in network marketing,...