We explain why a durable-goods monopolist would like to create a shortage in the marketplace.We argue that this incentive arises from the presence of a second-hand market and uncertainty about consumers' willingness to pay for the good. Consumers are heterogeneous in their valuations. Moreover,...

This paper studies the impact of liability on a credence-good seller's incentives to maintain a good reputation. Credence goods markets are characterized with information asymmetry about the value of sellers' services to consumers who must rely on sellers for diagnosis and treatment provision....

A decision maker offers a new product to a fixed number of adopters. The decision maker does not know the value of the product while adopters receive some private information about the value. We study how the decision maker may influence learning among adopters by manipulating the launch...

I study credence goods markets when there are both selfish and conscientious experts. The selfish expert is a profit maximizer. The conscientious expert wants to maximize profit and repair the consumer's problem. There are two classes of equilibria: uniform-price equilibria and nonuniform-price...

I study credence goods markets when there are both selfish and conscientious experts. The selfish expert is a profit maximizer. The conscientious expert wants to maximize profit and repair the consumer's problem. There are two classes of equilibria: uniform-price equilibria and nonuniform-price...

In China and some other developing countries' public health sectors, many patients give their doctors a payment outside the official channel before a major treatment. This secret payment has been documented as informal payment in the literature. We argue that the fundamental cause for informal...

We study firms' incentives to acquire private information in a setting where subsequent competition leads to firms' later signaling their private information to rivals. Due to signaling, equilibrium prices are distorted, and so while firms benefit from obtaining more precise private information,...

Purpose: Previous studies have investigated the influence strategy–economic satisfaction links within a pairwise framework. This study aims to reexamine this issue in a network context from both the structural and relational embeddedness perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: An ego...