Competition with product rivalry is examined in a model where products are differentiated by both quality and brand name. With no commitment, firms produce a full product line. When firms can commit to restrict their product offerings, firms specialize if the degree of brand-specific...

This paper presents a simple model of compatibility and bundling in industries where consumers assemble several necessary components into a system that is close to their ideal. The authors show that, for a wide range of parameters, firms will choose to produce compatible components but will...

In many industries, consumers combine several components to build their own "system." This paper analyzes the incentives to standardize among firms selling a single component to consumers who have already acquired the rest of the system. By selling a component that can work with different...

This paper investigates the impact of asymmetric information on the set of equilibria of a two-period duopoly game with price competition. It turns out that all admissible sequential equilibria of this game share a "collusive" character, i.e., ex ante expected profits for a firm of any type are...

The paper studies the pricing and advertising policies of a monopolist in a situation where consumers discover prices by costly search. The monopolist is shown to choose between no advertising and large scale advertising. This is shown to be optimal behavior even with decreasing returns to scale...