This paper studies strategies pursued by banks in order to differentiate their services and soften competition. More specifically we analyze whether bank's ability to avoid losses, its capital ratio, or bank size can be used as strategic variables to make banks different and increase the...

We introduce a theoretical model predicting that banks' interest rate markups follow a lifecycle pattern. Due to endogenous bank monitoring by competing banks, borrowing firms initially face a low markup, thereafter an increasing markup until it falls for old firms. By applying a large sample of...

This paper studies strategies pursued by banks in order to differentiate their services from those of their rivals. In that way competition among banks is softened. More specifically we analyze if the bank size, the bank's ability to avoid losses, and its capital ratio can be used as strategic...

Licensing promotes technology transfer and innovation, but enforcement of licensing contracts is often imperfect. We model contract enforcement as a game with perfect information but probabilistic enforcement and explore the implications of weak enforcement on the design of licensing contracts,...

Borrowers' reputation concerns makes communication of soft or non-verifiable information credible. We find that some misreporting of short-term information has costs as well as benefits. The costs are due to inefficient management of investments, while the benefits are due to the fact that some...

It is a widely adopted practice for firms to announce new products well in advance of actual market availability. The incentives for pre-announcements are stronger in markets with network effects because they can be used to induce the delay of consumers' purchases and forestall the build-up of...