This paper investigates a retailer's incentive of sharing the private demand information with a supplier who may encroach the retail channel by exerting a fixed entry cost. Although the conventional wisdom suggests that a retailer should withhold her private demand observation to keep the...

Problem definition: Outsourcing is a common operations strategy nowadays, but it may lead to an unintended consequence of supplier copycatting. When outsourcing, there is some subtle information that the manufacturer knows but is optional for the supplier to carry out the production task, such...

In this paper, we investigate a seller's voluntary disclosure strategy when serving two groups of consumers who arrive sequentially and are reference dependent with respect to product quality. Consumers may be naive or sophisticated, depending on whether they can make rational inferences from...

Motivated by the pervasive discrepancy among the pricing schemes of data services, this paper investigates the selection of pricing metrics (variables) and the corresponding pricing plans. We construct a stylized model in which a monopoly data services seller faces heterogeneous consumers whose...

We consider a powerful original equipment manufacturer (OEM) who relies on a contract manufacturer (CM) to produce her product. In addition to the OEM's product, the CM also produces for a less powerful OEM. The two products not only are engaged in Cournot competition in the consumer market, but...

This paper examines optimal targeting and sequencing strategies in the setup proposed by Ballester et al. (2006). The setup features payoff externalities and strategic complementarity among players, who non-cooperatively determine their contributions. We first analyze a two-stage game in which...

Despite the prominence of the risk-incentives trade-off in the agency theory, empirical evidence provides at best a mixed result. In this paper, we argue that these mixed results may be attributed to the heterogeneity of risk aversion magnitude among the agents and the outside options available...

We theoretically and experimentally examine the impact of pay transparency policies and payment schemes on individuals’ effort decisions and their performance. By considering the “no information” policy as a benchmark that only informs each agent of his own performance and pay, we examine...

In recent economic and business environment, firms, especially startups, are interested in financial opportunities, such as capital raising and acquisition. Typically, potential investors will be attracted by firms that exhibit nice trends of profit growth, and therefore firms need to manage...

We develop a model of multi-product consumer return policy for firms selling multiple products to customers with uncertain valuations. Customers observe their valuations of the products upon purchase, and depending on the return policy, they can return one or many products for a refund. The firm...