In a duopoly model of horizontal and vertical differentiation, where consumers are ex-ante unaware of product qualities, we study the firms' incentives to signal quality via prices. Consumers, after they observe prices, can evaluate a firm's product quality before purchase if they incur a search...

An interesting feature of the data is that the price distribution in the absence of promotional activities first order stochastically dominates that under display or feature advertising. The theoretical model we introduce can yield an equilibrium that is consistent with the above observations

The comparison between specific (per unit) and ad valorem (percentage) taxation has been one of the oldest issues in public finance. In Cournot markets, with deterministic costs structures, conventional wisdom has it that ad valorem taxation tax-revenue dominates specific. It is shown that in...

We investigate the relationship between competition and firm specialization in the venture capital (VC) market. Staged financing motivates VC firms to fund entrepreneurs in various states of maturity: startup/seed, early, growth, and so forth, and leads to stage specialization. Contrary to the...

We investigate the effect of competition on price dispersion in the airline industry. Using panel data from 1993 to 2008, we find a nonmonotonic effect of competition on price dispersion. An increase in competition is associated with greater price dispersion in concentrated markets but with less...

A class of employment contracts entailing production targets and consequent rewards is studied. In a nondiscriminatory environment, a principal hiring many agents faces the problem of writing a common contract which induces the highest possible effort from each one of his agents. While a very...

Recent developments in information technology (IT) have resulted in the collection of a vast amount of customer-specific data. As IT advances, the quality of such information improves. We analyze a unifying spatial price discrimination model that encompasses the two most studied paradigms of...