We analyze firms' competition to steer an advisor's recommendations through potentially non-linear incentives. Even when firms are symmetric, so that the overall size of compensation would not distort advice when incentives were linear, advice is biased when firms are allowed to make...

How should firms optimally choose prices and promotional strategies and how should they position their products when consumers are "relative thinkers"? We provide answers in a model that extends the seminal contributions of Varian (1980) and Narasimhan (1988) and derive both managerial...

Embedding consumer experimentation with a product or service into a market environment, we find that unregulated contracts induce too few returns or cancella tions, as they do not internalize a pecuniary externality on other firms in the market. Forcing firms to let consumers learn longer by...

Arguably the most widely used techniques for estimating price overcharges from competition law infringements are the dummy variable and the forecasting approaches using linear regression analysis. While rarely used in practice, in this note we make use of the fully interacted dummy variable...

We model negotiations over patent royalties in the shadow of litigation through a Nash-in-Nash approach, where outside options, triggered in case of disagreement, are derived from a subsequent game of litigation. The outcome of litigation depends both on "hard determinants", such as relative...

Die Vorlage von in der Regel unterschiedlicher ökonometrischer Evidenz durch die verschiedenen Parteien birgt die Gefahr, dass diese vor Gericht ohne weitere Analyse als widersprüchlich erachtet und damit ggf. sogar gänzlich ignoriert werden. Mittels des Konzepts der "severity" oder "Schwere"...

Manufacturers frequently resist heavy discounting of their products by retailers, especially when they are used as so-called loss leaders. Since low prices should increase demand and manufacturers could simply refuse to fund deep price promotions, such resistance is puzzling at first sight. We...

As store brands (or private labels) are not only common in many product categories but are often procured competitively from different sources or even through vertical integration, they may be not or much less directly affected by a cartel induced overcharge. The first part of this article...

This paper revisits the effects of income changes on consumption of private households by focusing on a commonly disregarded and yet sizeable component of household expenditures: consumption of food and non-food consumer packaged goods. We exploit a new data source from the Netherlands that...

In a variety of purchasing situations, consumers may focus primarily on headline prices, ignoring the full costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a product or service contract. Even when this is the case, it is widely believed that intense competition would adequately protect consumers...