In this paper, the author demonstrates, through an example, that, in oligopolistic markets, it is only in special cases that warranties can serve as signals of quality. Warranties are perfect signals only in cases in which the intrinsic attributes of products are neither too clustered nor too...

We examine incentives for nonconsolidating horizontal mergers in commercial media industries. In a model with differentiated media and products, we show that such a merger is profitable if merging media firms gain a relative bargaining advantage vis-à-vis advertisers in the negotiations for...

In oligopolistic markets where competition is in prices, producers may prefer to be represented by agents that sell their products, even if those agents do not provide any direct services to promote the sale of the product and even if contracting is costly. Contracting with the agents serves as...

Retailers and their suppliers often exchange demand information, which is believed to benefit both firms and consumers. We show how such information exchange can benefit only the upstream supplier at the expense of the downstream retailer and consumers.

The personal video recorder (PVR) facilitates the use of targeted advertising by allowing companies to monitor television viewing behavior and to build demographic profiles of viewers from the data that are collected. Our research explores the extent to which an advertiser should allocate...

In the present paper we identify those characteristics of the markets served by a franchise chain which determine the relative incentives of the owner of the chain to monitor the behavior of individual franchisees. We find that the owner has greater incentives to monitor the outlets that serve...

While retailers have sales data to forecast demand, manufacturers have a broad understanding of the market and the coming trends. It is well known that pooling such demand information within a distribution channel improves supply chain logistics. However, little is known about how...