Price advertisement by retail stores is pervasive. If there exist non-negligible costs of consumer search, a retailer can increase the number of consumers visiting its location by advertising a low price, thus increasing consumers' expected utilities from search. If the increase in the number of...

This paper studies the usefulness of advertising to both consumers and experts in specialized markets like the prescription drugs, travel and real-estate markets where the consumers' purchasing decisions are influenced by the experts (e.g., doctors, travel agents and real-estate agents)....

This paper analyzes advertising incentives and strategies in specialized markets, where consumers' decisions are dictated by experts. By analyzing the market stealing and market expanding aspects of advertising, this study shows that in a sub-game perfect equilibrium only some (and not all)...

We consider how the amount of the technology transferred and the characteristics of the partneraffect licensing. We find that a partial technology transfer can be the joint-profit minimizingtransfer, though under weakly concave demand, a complete transfer always increases joint profitif there...

Which issues are discussed by candidates in an election campaign? Why are some issues never discussed? Model tractability is lost quickly when dealing with these questions, partly because of the multidimensional voting inherent in models of multiple issues. Our model features two candidates for...

In many industries, firms reward their customers for making referrals. We analyze the optimal policy mix of price, advertising intensity, and referral fee for monopoly when buyers choose to what extent to refer other consumers to the firm. We find that the firm uses its referral fee, but not its...

For many goods and services, such as cellular-phone service and debit-card transactions, the price of the next unit of service depends on past usage. As a result, consumers who are inattentive to their past usage but are aware of contract terms may remain uncertain about the price of the next...

We consider the optimal pricing and referral strategy of a monopoly that uses a simple consumer communication network (a chain) to spread product information. The first-best policy with fully discriminatory position-based referral fees involves standard monopoly pricing and referral fees that...

Geographical concentration of stores that sell similar commodities is pervasive. To analyze this phenomenon, this paper provides a simple two dimensional spatial competition model with consumer taste uncertainty. Given taste uncertainty, concentration of stores attracts more consumers since more...

Joint production between rival firms often entails knowledge transfers without direct compensation, leaving the question as to why more efficient firms would give their rivals such an advantage.  We find that such transfers are credible mechanisms to make the market more competitive so as to...