This paper constructs a model of the provision of commercial music in which some consumers (enthusiasts) enjoy diversity and others (faddists) prefer to follow what is popular. Record companies sign up bands, only some of whom will 'succeed' - a process modelled in a number of alternate ways -...

We characterize the outcomes of games when players may make binding offers of strategy contingent side payments before the game is played. This does not always lead to efficient outcomes, despite complete information and costless contracting. The characterizations are illustrated in a series of...

We examine the design of nonlinear prices by a multiproduct monopolist who serves customers with multidimensional but correlated types. We show that the monopoly can exploit the correlations between consumers' types to design pricing mechanisms that fully extract the surplus from each consumer....

The theory of mechanism design and implementation abounds with clever mechanisms whose equilibrium outcomes are optimal according to some social choice rule. However, the cleverness of these mechanisms relies on intricate systems of rewards and punishments off-the-equilibrium path. Generally, it...

We examine the set of Pareto-efficient allocations in economies with public goods. We show that even if preferences are continuous and strongly monotonic, it need not coincide with the set of weakly efficient allocations. We then study topological properties of the Pareto set. We show that it is...

Since the 1970's most industrialized countries have undertaken massiveinvestment in computers and information technology (IT). Several stylizedfacts emerge from the empirical studies, see Landauer, 1993. In particular,they have found that this investment has not lead to a general increase...