A seller faces a buyer with unknown reservation value. We show that buyer risk aversion can make it in the seller's interest to haggle. That is, the seller should make an initial offer and then, if it is rejected, make a second offer with some probability strictly less than one. This is true...

A price-setting seller faces a buyer with unknown reservation value. We show that if the buyer is sufficiently risk averse, the seller can benefit from employing a Possibly-Final Offer (PFO) strategy. In a PFO, if the buyer rejects the seller's initial offer the seller sometimes terminates the...

Recommender and reputation systems seek to inform potential customers by securing current consumers' feedback about products and sellers. This paper proposes a payment-based system to induce honest reporting of feedback. The system applies proper scoring rules to each buyer's report, looking to...

Consumerism arises when patients acquire and use medical information from sources other than their physicians. This practice has been hailed as a means of improving quality. This need not be the result. Our theoretical model identifies a channel through which consumerism may reduce quality:...

"A price-setting seller faces a buyer with unknown reservation value. We show that if the buyer is sufficiently risk averse, the seller can benefit from employing a Possibly-Final Offer (PFO) strategy. In a PFO, if the buyer rejects the seller's initial offer the seller sometimes terminates the...