Economic analysis of spectrum policy focuses on government revenues derived via competitive bidding for licenses. Auctions generating high bids are identified as successful and those with lower receipts as fiascoes. Yet spectrum policies that create rents impose social costs. Most obviously,...

Asymmetric price cycles similar to Edgeworth Cycles are appearing in increasingly many retail gasoline markets in the United States and worldwide. The asymmetry in the cycles can give rise to a finding of asymmetric price <roman>responses</roman> to cost shocks (asymmetric passthrough). This article estimates...

We study a model of centralized admissions in which schools are allowed to pre-commit to admitting qualified applicants who rank them as their top choices over more qualified applicants who do not. A less popular school may use the pre-commitment to steal applicants who otherwise would not...

Economic models of contract typically assume that courts enforce obligations based on verifiable events (corresponding to the legal rule of specific performance). As a matter of law, this is not the case. This leaves open the question of optimal contract design given the available remedies used...

This article examines the implications of prominence in search markets. We model prominence by supposing that the prominent firm will be sampled first by all consumers. If there are no systematic quality differences among firms, we find that the prominent firm will charge a lower price than its...

As is well recognized, market dominance is a typical outcome in markets with network effects. A firm with a larger installed base offers a more attractive product which induces more consumers to buy its product which produces a yet bigger installed base advantage. Such a setting is investigated...

We identify the optimal contract between a rating agency and a firm and the circumstances under which simple ownership contracts implement this optimal solution. We assume that the decision to obtain a rating is endogenous and the price of a rating is a strategic variable. Clients hiding their...

I develop an agency model of job assignments where jobs differ based on the breadth of tasks. A tradeoff between task complementarities and relative abilities of workers results in those with balanced skills being assigned to multitask jobs. The same tradeoff between complementarities and...

We study effects of horizontal integration on firm reputation in an environment where customers observe only imperfect signals about firms' effort/quality choices. Horizontal integration leads to a larger market base for the merged firm, and thus helps reputation building with more effective...

Suppose risk-averse managers can hedge the aggregate component of their exposure to firm's cash-flow risk by trading in financial markets but cannot hedge their firm-specific exposure. This gives them incentives to pass up firm-specific projects in favor of standard projects that contain greater...