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...

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...

In this paper, we investigate two questions. First, we explore which entity (the NHTSA or the manufacturer) is more likely to initiate a given auto safety recall campaign. Second, we analyze the determinants of owner response rates to safety recalls. Our data spans nineteen years (1980-1998) for...

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...

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....