We model an environment where e-retailers sell similar products and endogenously engage in both brand advertising (to create loyal customers) and price advertising (to attract "shoppers"). In contrast to models where loyalty is exogenous, endogenizing the creation of loyal customers by allowing...

Increasingly, lobbying groups are subject to transparency requirements, obliging them to provide detailed information about their business. We study the effect this transparency policy has on the nature of lobbying competition. Under mild conditions, mandated transparency leads to an increase in...

In many settings, including venture capital financing, mergers and acquisitions, and lease competition, the structure of the contracts over which firms compete differs. Furthermore, the structure of the contract affects the future incentives of the firm to engage in value-creating activities by...

What is the New Economy, what makes it new, and what are the implications for antitrust, regulation and macroeconomic policy? Providing a non-technical and compelling analysis of the modern macro-economy, the contributors to this volume, eminent scholars all, provide their views on the New...

Timing is crucial in situations ranging from currency attacks, to product introductions, to starting a revolution. These settings share the feature that payoffs depend critically on the timing of a few other key players—and their moves are uncertain. To capture this, we introduce the...

The equilibrium model of Ellison, Fudenberg, and Möbius (2004) predicts that, if two competing auction sites are coexisting, then seller revenues and buyer-seller ratios on each site should be approximately equal. We examine these hypotheses using field experiments selling identical items on...

We study the value of commitment in contests and tournaments when there are costs for the follower to observe the leader's behavior. In a contest, the follower can pay to observe the leader's effort but cannot observe the effectiveness of that effort. In a tournament, the follower can pay to...

Timing is crucial in situations ranging from product introductions, to currency attacks, to starting a revolution. These settings share the feature that payoffs depend critically on the timing of moves of a few other key players—and these are uncertain. To capture this, we introduce the...

type="main" <p>A firm surveys a large number of consumers, some of whom sincerely report their tastes and others of whom report strategically. It makes product decisions using the sample mean of survey responses. When firms and consumers agree on the fraction of sincere consumers, information loss...</p>

We conducted 80 auctions on eBay. Forty of these auctions were for various popular music CDs while the remaining 40 auctions were for video games for Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. The revenue equivalence theorem states that any auction form having the same effective reserve price yields the...