Book review

It has been argued that two factors -- product durability and (potential) entry -- may force a monopolist to price at marginal cost. This article shows that when these two forces coexist, the tendency toward competition may be negated. First, we prove that durable goods oligopolists without...

Travel-time savings tend to be the dominant benefit of transportation improvements in developed countries. We can infer the values travelers attach to travel time from their choices among services that differ in time and money costs. This study applies maximum-likelihood estimation techniques to...

This article investigates the extent and importance of rate competition among railroads for the export shipment of three narrowly defined agricultural commodities since passage of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which increased the railroads' freedom to set rates. I construct measures of...

To examine the potential gains from a second production source, we examine how source switching is optimally structured. The model focuses on a purchaser who manages the acquisition process, an incumbent supplier, and a potential entrant or second supplier. Because the costs of the incumbent and...

Many complex organizations, such as planned Soviet enterprises and the U.S. military, routinely transfer employees between jobs. Since this sacrifices job-specific human capital, the practice is puzzling. This article shows that regular job transfers may be part of an optimal incentive scheme in...

After developing a conceptual analysis of consumer valuation of multiple risks, we explore both economic and cognitive hypotheses regarding individual risk-taking. Using a sample of over 1,500 consumers, our study ascertains risk-dollar tradeoffs for the risks associated with using an...

Hick's theorem permits aggregation of commodities when their relative prices are fixed, but, contrary to a widely expressed view, it does not require that they be aggregated. Even where commodities have identical prices, all of their income elasticities and many of their price elasticities can...

Even if firms in a market choose discount prices noncooperatively, the use of most-favored customer and meet-or-release contracts enables those firms to adopt quantity-choice strategies. Consequently, there can be a range of list prices that are impervious to unilateral nonselective discounts,...

Coase conjectured that a durable goods monopolist who can make offers to sell arbitrarily frequently will lose the ability to extract positive profits. This result, which has now been proved, can be attributed to the inability of the monopolist to commit to maintaining sufficiently high prices...