This study investigates the structure of optimal incentives in a stochastic environment and provides evidence for the use of self-enforcing relational contracts. We show theoretically that under relational contracting, firms can credibly promise chief executive officers (CEOs) larger bonuses in...

This paper examines the optimal sequencing of sales in the presence of network externalities. A firm sells a good to a group of consumers whose payoff from buying is increasing in total quantity sold. The firm selects the order to serve consumers so as to maximize expected sales. It can serve...

This paper examines how a firm can strategically use sellouts to influence beliefs about its good's popularity. A monopolist faces a market of conformist consumers, whose willingness to pay is increasing in their beliefs about aggregate demand. Consumers are broadly rational but have limited...

There is an increasing number of Collaborative Question Answering (CQA) websites and a growing reliance of the online community on user-generated content. In this paper, we study users' motivation to win social recognition contests (best answers) and how multitasking and flexible hours influence...