This paper studies the impact of competition on the benefits of advance selling. I construct a two-period price-setting game with heterogeneous consumers and two firms that produce different brands. Some consumers prefer one brand, others prefer the other brand. Consumers derive common value...

I consider a retailer who sells a new product over two periods: advance and regular selling seasons. Experienced consumers learn their valuations for the product in the advance selling season, while inexperienced consumers learn only when the product becomes available in the regular selling...

When an improvable durable good (such as packaged software) saturates the market, the seller could be tempted to release new versions too frequently, hurting her profit. A novel contractual device, which we term as a Free New Version Rights warranty (Free NVR warranty), can help the seller...

The goal of this paper is to reexamine the optimal design and efficiency of loyalty rewards in markets for final consumption goods. While the literature has emphasized the role of loyalty rewards as endogenous switching costs (which distort the efficient allocation of consumers), in this paper l...

The goal of this paper is to reexamine the optimal design and efficiency of loyalty rewards in markets for final consumption goods. While the literature has emphasized the role of loyalty rewards as endogenous switching costs (which distort the efficient allocation of consumers), in this paper I...

The goal of this paper is to reexamine the optimal design and efficiency of loyalty rewards in markets for final consumption goods. While the literature has emphasized the role of loyalty rewards as endogenous switching costs (which distort the efficient allocation of consumers), in this paper I...

In an intertemporal setting in which individual uncertainty is resolved over time, advance-purchase discounts can serve to price discriminate between consumers with different expected valuations for the same product. Consumers with a high expected valuation purchase the product before learning...

A test of the predictions of Dana’s (2001) model of monopoly price dispersion under demand uncertainty using ticket price data from Major League Baseball shows that ticket price dispersion changes systematically with demand uncertainty, verifying the predictions of the model.

Dana (2001) developed a model of price dispersion under demand uncertainty. The model predicts that, in the face of uncertain demand and inflexible prices, monopolists maximizes pro fits using ex ante price discrimination. We test the predictions of this model using a unique data set from Major...