This paper examines whether commercial radio stations try to play their commercials at the same time. A simple model shows that stations may want to choose the same times (coordination) or different times (differentiation) depending on how listeners behave. It also shows that how much...

Detection and deterrence of collusion are longstanding antitrust problems, made difficult because collusive arrangements are usually surreptitious. In this paper, I discuss factors that facilitate or inhibit collusive schemes, as well as circumstances where detection is possible. I describe how...

This paper examines the welfare effects of intellectual property protection, accounting for firms' optimal responses to legal environments. I examine firms' use of indirect price discrimination in response to U.S. copyright law preventing direct price discrimination. Using data covering VHS and...

This paper considers an environment where two principals sequentially contract with a common agent and studies the exchange of information between the two bilateral relationships. We show that when (a) the upstream principal is not personally interested in the decisions of the downstream...

In both corporate finance and asset pricing empirical work, researchers are often confronted with panel data. In these data sets the residuals may be correlated across firms and across time, and OLS standard errors can be biased. Historically, the two literatures have used different solutions to...

The authors offer a detailed analysis of the coordination costs behind the standardization of 56K modems. They focus primarily on market events and standard-setting activities during early deployment. They argue that the canonical model for a standards war is misleading in the case of 56K. They...

We discuss a class of markets for durable goods where efficiency (or approximate efficiency) is obtained despite the presence of information asymmetries. In the model, the number of times a good has changed hands (the vintage of the good) is an accurate signal of its quality, each consumer...

We study dynamic monopoly pricing of storable goods in an environment where demand changes over time. The literature on durables has focused on incentives to delay purchases. Our analysis focuses on a different intertemporal demand incentive. The key force on the consumer side is advance...

Temporary price reductions (sales) are common for many goods and naturally result in a large increase in the quantity sold. We explore whether the data support the hypothesis that these increases are, at least partly, due to dynamic consumer behavior: at low prices consumers stockpile for future...

56K modems were introduced under two competing incompatible standards. We show the importance of competition between Internet Service Providers in the adoption process. We show that ISPs were less likely to adopt the technology that more competitors adopted. This result is particularly striking...