This study primarily focuses on the effect of information on consumers’ purchasing behavior. If consumers are provided with information about a specific product they may change their beliefs about that product. This distribution of information may lead the consumer to make the decision either...

This article discusses the current state of contract theory and its usefulness for conceptualizing issues related to agricultural contracting. I will discuss the limitations of existing theory for applied work, and what methodological improvements are needed to enhance the usefulness of the...

Pricing decisions for new product are always challenging due to limited information such as market needs and competition. Contingent valuation is a widely used technique to elicit value for new products or non-market goods. Previous literature has shown that potential buyers use a reference...

Replaced with revised version of paper 06/26/06.

Replaced with revised version of paper 09/22/09.

Two well-known hypotheses from the literature on tournaments are that (1) tournaments can filter out common shocks thereby reducing agents risk exposure; and (2) disincentive effects can arise when a tournament scheme is administered on a group of mixed ability agents. While handicapping and/or...

This paper reports the results of an economic experiment investigating human subjects' preferences for two types of contracts tournaments and fixed performance standard contracts. Willingness to pay data was elicited through an auction and results suggest that subjects prefer fixed performance...