We adopt a framework of vertical differentiation (i.e. differentiation by quality) to study the issue of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We develop a model of duopoly in a two‐country setting, in which firms choose the country of location, the level of CSR and finally compete in the...

A firm chooses a price and the product information it discloses to a consumer whose tastes are privately known. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the match function for full disclosure to be the unique equilibrium outcome whatever the costs and prior beliefs about product and...

Consequences of network externalities, such as product growth and innovation diffusion, are widely studied in marketing literature. However, there is little empirical research that examines the existence of such network externalities in consumer behavior. When and how do consumers take into...

This paper proposes an analysis of the emergence and evolution of institutional frameworks. It explains the causes, process, and outcome of institutional evolution. We first describe the institutional framework as a multilevel system at the bottom of which several “local and flexible”...

We extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising. We model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product, and determine a firm's equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information, price information, and...

Improved consumer information about horizontal aspects of products of similar quality leads to better consumer matching but also to higher prices, so consumer surplus can go up or down, while profits rise. With enough quality asymmetry, though, the higher-quality (and hence larger) firm's price...

Efficiency arguments explain why commercial intermediaries exist and will continue to be involved in the exchanges despite the spread of digital networks. Commercial intermediaries provide producers and consumers with a set of information, logistic, securization and insurance (and liquidity)...