The popular Internet marketplace, eBay, introduced the Best Offer format in 2005. This paper studies buyer's behavior under such a mechanism. We characterize this mechanism as a sequential-move game between the seller of an item and its buyers. Our model suggests that a rational buyer's offer...

We empirically investigate the factors which influence a buyer's behavior in making an offer to purchase a car listed on eBay Motors using the “Best Offer” option. Our results indicate that a buyer's first offer is affected by observed information, including the number of buyers making an...

The paper considers an ascending price auction with two bidders, in which the buyers are given the additional option to obtain the object immediately by paying a fixed price (the buy-out price). We completely characterize the optimal bidding strategy of the bidder and the optimal buy-out price...

Does the offshoring of production degrade or enhance the innovative capabilities of manufacturing firms? We contribute to this debate by exploiting a policy shock that differentially affected the ability of Taiwanese firms to offshore some products to China. We find causal evidence that...