Measurement efforts to reduce the uncertainty concerning the attributes of heterogeneous goods may simply redistribute wealth and result in social waste. Individuals bearing the cost of such distributional measurement have incentives to develop buying and selling practices that limit such...

Manufacturers of branded pharmaceuticals sometimes strategically redesign their products in order to prevent the substitution of a generic product at the pharmacy counter. This product-redesign strategy impairs the generic’s most cost-efficient (and only commercially feasible) means of...