This paper provides a solution to Proebsting’s Paradox, an argument that appears to show that the investment rule known as the Kelly criterion can lead a decision maker to invest a higher fraction of his wealth the more unfavorable the odds he faces are and, as a consequence, risk an...

This paper shows how an airline monopoly uses refundable and non-refundable tickets to screen consumers who are uncertain about their travel. Our theoretical model predicts that the difference between these two fares diminishes as individual demand uncertainty is resolved. Using an original data...

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyze how his decision...

This paper examines the future for the growth and transmission of knowledge with a particular focus on the collision between the zero-marginal-cost economics of online publishing and the finite attention spans of those who download content. The paper tries to show that while it is likely that...

This paper attempts to analyze the medical and economical reasons that cause a difference in the price elasticity of patients' demand to drugs between Egypt and the United States of America. The study was based on two medicines produced by Pfizer (Lipitor and Viagra), with both of them available...

We show how introductory offers emerge endogenously under conditions of competition in markets with switching costs. In a standard Hotelling model we find the combination of switching costs and introductory discounts to reduce industry profits relative to industries without switching costs, in...

Interest rates on consumer lending are lower when funds are tied to purchase of a durable good than when they are made available on an unconditional basis. Further, dealers often choose to bear the financial cost of their customers’ credit purchases. This Paper interprets this phenomenon in...

This Paper provides an empirical examination of third-degree price discrimination in the Swedish newspaper industry. The results show that price discrimination is more prevalent in competitive markets and among newspapers with low market shares. This supports predictions from recent theoretical...

Concert tickets can either be sold at a single price or at multiple prices corresponding to different seating categories. We study the relationship between price discrimination and revenue by examining variations in the number of seating categories across concert, tour, artist, location, and...

This paper combines the pricing-to-market equation and the residual demand elasticity equation to measure the extent of competition in the export markets of ceramic tiles, which has been dominated by Italian and Spanish producers since the late eighties. The findings show that the tile exporters...