We study the feasibility and profitability of predation in a parsimonious infinite-horizon, complete information setting where an incumbent may face an entrant, in which case it needs to decide whether to accommodate or predate it. If the entrant exits, a new entrant is born with positive...

We study how informal buyer-supplier relationships in the German automotive industry affect procurement. Using unique data from a survey focusing on these, we show that more trust, the belief that the trading partner acts to maintain the mutual relationship, is associated with both higher...

Based on data from a comprehensive benchmarking study on buyer-supplier relationships in the German automotive industry, we show that more trust in a relationship is associated with higher idiosyncratic investment by suppliers and better part quality - but also with more competition among...

Increased competition tends to benefit all buyers with increasing product variety and decreasing prices. However, if local and external market channels compete for the same class of products, increased competition from the external market crowds out local variety. Under local monopoly, local...

Online ratings play an important role in many markets. However, how fast they can reveal seller types remains unclear. To study this question, we propose a new model in which a buyer learns about the seller’s type from previous ratings and her own experience and rates the seller if she learns...

Online ratings play an important role in many markets. We study the often disputed information content of these ratings, by proposing a reduced-form Bayesian model of the typical buyer's rating decision. Our empirical evidence based on eBay raw data is in line with even intricate predictions...

Digital platforms sometimes offer incentives to a subset of sellers to nudge behavior, possibly affecting the behavior of all sellers in the equilibrium. In this paper, we study a policy change on a large e-commerce platform that offers financial incentives only to platform-certified sellers...

We study consumer response towards sponsored search advertising and how to improve advertising performance on a large e-commerce platform. Our research design is based on a field experiment which randomizes the salience of ad disclosure to consumers, and a natural experiment which eradicates a...

We study a differentiated product market in which an investor initially owns a controlling stake in one of two competing firms and may acquire a non-controlling or a controlling stake in a competitor, either directly using her own assets, or indirectly via the controlled firm. While industry...

We study the effects of improvements in market transparency on eBay on seller exit and continuing sellers' behavior. An improvement in market transparency by reducing strategic bias in buyer ratings led to a significant increase in buyer valuation especially of sellers rated poorly prior to the...