Firms nowadays are increasingly proactive in trying to strategically capitalize on consumer networks and social interactions. In this paper, we complement an emerging body of research on the engineering of word-of-mouth (WOM) effects by exploring a different angle through which firms can...

A data broker sells market segmentations created by consumer data to a producer with private production cost who sells a product to a unit mass of consumers with heterogeneous values. In this setting, I completely characterize the revenue-maximizing mechanisms for the data broker. In particular,...

This paper uses tools provided by lattice theory to describe the second-degree price discrimination problem faced by a monopolist seller of a network good, and to give a complete characterization of the optimal contracts it can use. We build a general model in a discrete and a continuous type...

This chapter reviews recent theoretical work on the design of regulatory policy, focusing on the complications that arise when regulated suppliers have better information about the regulated industry than do regulators. The discussion begins by characterizing the optimal regulation of a monopoly...

Each agent in a market needs to supplement his skill with a particular skill of another agent to complete his project. A platform matches the agents and allows members of the same match to share their skills. A match is valuable to an agent if he is matched with any agent who possesses a skill...

This paper studies price discrimination using observables that are manipulable by the buyers at a cost. Rather than deterring manipulation, the optimal price discrimination mechanism (OPDM) offers each observable a personalized price that induces the buyers to pretend to have a lower valuation....

This paper studies a bilateral trade game where (i) the buyer is uncertain about her desired consumption amount (needs) of a perfectly divisible good and receives a signal about it, (ii) and the seller posts a take-it-or-leave-it price to the buyer. The seller's information design trades off...

We address the issue of risk aversion in a competitive equilibrium when some buyers engage in learning and information is conveyed through the price system. Specifically, since the learning process yields uncertainty, we study the effect of risk aversion on the equilibrium outcomes of the model,...

For many goods (such as experience goods or addictive goods), consumers’ preferences may change over time. In this paper, we examine a monopolist’s optimal pricing schedule when current consumption can affect a consumer’s valuation in the future and valuations are unobservable. We assume...

Based on the critical assumption of strategic complementarity, this paper builds a general model to describe and solve the screening problem faced by the monopolist seller of a network good. By applying monotone comparative static tools, we demonstrate that the joint presence of asymmetric...