How do price commitments impact the amount of information firms acquire about potential customers? We examine this question in the context of a competitive market. Contracts are incomplete because the amount of information firms acquire about applicants during the screening process cannot be...

We study a dynamic principal agent model of fraud and evolution of trust. The principal has limited power of commitment and wishes to accept a real project and reject a fake. The agent is either an ethical type that produces only a real project, or a strategic type that also has the ability to...

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers stockpiled common household items in expectation of shortages and rising prices. In this paper, we explore the interaction of consumer stockpiling with monopoly pricing in the face of a supply disruption. If consumers can store the good, they...

A model of an exclusive group or class whose membership is governed by personal contact and interaction is studied. Members of this old-boy network attempt to shield themselves from transacting with opportunistic or incompetent individuals by dealing only infrequently with unproven nonmembers....

A well-known shortcoming of rational voter models is that the equilibrium probability that an individual votes converges to zero as the population of citizens tends to infinity. We show that this does not - as is often suggested - imply that equilibrium voter turnout is insignificant in the...

When a firm can recognize its previous customers, it may use information about their past purchases to price discriminate. We study a model with a monopolist and a continuum of heterogeneous consumers, where consumers have the ability to maintain their anonymity and avoid being identified as...

The common marketing practice of offering subscribers enticements to switch suppliers is explored. It is shown that this type of price discrimination is the natural mode of competition in subscription markets such as long distance telephony and banking and that it prevails even when the industry...

Explore the practice of offering subscribers enticements to switch suppliers. This type of competition is natural in subscription markets for homogeneous goods and services. Efficiency is impaired because subscribers are induced to expend resources changing suppliers. Subscription markets are...

Personal privacy is studied in the context of a competitive product (or labor) market. In the first stage of the game, firms that sell homogeneous goods or services (e.g., insurance, credit, or rental housing) post prices they promise to charge approved applicants. In the second stage, each...