Firms often give away free goods with the product that they sell. Firms often give stock options to their top management and other employees. Mixing these two practices-giving stock options to consumers who buy the firm's product-, creates a deadly brew. Large numbers of consumers can be lured...

The information and communications revolution has hastened the process of globalization in today's world of business. Consequently, businesses, even small and mid-sized companies, are confronted with cultural diversity when these companies become internationally active. Yet only few businesses...

Die Allgemeinfreiheit und rechtliche Schutzunfähigkeit von Ideen - und somit gleichermaßen von Werbeideen - gilt als eiserne Regel unserer Gesellschaft. Die Möglichkeit, bereits bestehende Ideen als Basis freischaffender Kreativität zu nutzen, sie umzuformen, neu zu erfinden und mit eigenen...

We analyze a market where firms compete in a conventional and an electronicretail channel. Consumers easily compare prices online, but some incur purchaseuncertainties on the online channel. We investigate the market shares of the two retailchannels and the prices that are charged. We find that...

We analyze the incentives for incumbent bricks-and-mortar firms and newentrants to start an online retail channel in a differentiated goods market. Tothis end we set up a two-stage model where firms first decide whether or notto build the infrastructure necessary to start an online retail...

Im Zeitraum 2009 bis 2011 waren rd. 1,3 Mio. Unternehmen aus Deutschland, zu 99 % KMU, international aktiv. Damit besaßen rund 37 % aller Unternehmen direkte Auslandskontakte (bei Berücksichtigung indirekter Kontaktformen: 44 %). Am häufigsten unterhielten die Unternehmen Im- und...

The paper is based on the acknowledgement that properties of markets stemming from features of demand are too frequently overlooked in the economic literature, and a re-balancing is necessary to properly account for theoretical and empirical phenomena. We sustain that one of the most relevant...

We offer the first direct evidence of an implicit contract in a goods market. The evidence we offer comes from the market for Coca-Cola. We demonstrate that the Coca-Cola Company left a substantial amount of written evidence of its implicit contract with its consumers-a very explicit form of an...