We consider the consequences of a shared brand name such as geographical names used to identify high quality products, for the incentives of otherwise autonomous firms to invest in quality. We contend that such collective brand labels improve communication between sellers and consumers, when the...

Empirical evidence suggests that prices are sticky with respect to cost changes. Moreover, prices respond more rapidly to cost increases than to cost decreases. We develop a search theoretic model which is consistent with this evidence and allows for additional testable predictions. Our results...

Although it is widely held that sellers prefer to appear early in a consumer's search, some evidence from online markets suggests this need not be the case. We develop a model which incorporates costly search and costly recall and demonstrate that when both frictions are small, appearing later...

A consumer with unit demand sequentially visits sellers of competing products for which her private values are uncertain. She can learn each value at a cost or purchase any of the products without learning. Each seller optimally sets either a "regular" price which induces a visiting consumer to...