invest in innovation and eventually to lower-quality products. Manufacturers, policy makers, and researchers all claim that … the manufacturer's quality decision problem in the presence of piracy. We consider a monopolist who does not have any … marginal costs but has a product development cost quadratic in the quality level produced. The monopolist faces a consumer …

, namely, faster services at higher levels of quality, as indicated by lower lengths of stay (LOS) and reduced mortality rates …

Little is known about the processes that make TQM effective. Why are some quality improvement projects more effective … organizational effectiveness. We explore this by studying 62 quality improvement projects undertaken in one factory over a decade …

entrants and to discourage entry. The market consists of customer segments with different valuations for product quality. We … demonstrate that a higher quality and a higher price of each product in the line convey the firm's advantage to potential … from the line. When product quality change is costly, the superior incumbent continues to select a higher quality and price …

, little research has focused on the impact of component sharing on quality. In this paper, we examine how component sharing … impacts one dimension of quality--reliability--defined as mean time to failure. Design considerations suggest that a component … improve conformance quality, and can increase reliability via learning from end-user feedback. The engineering literature …

This paper integrates the process oriented view of quality in manufacturing with the multi-attribute product … competition. In manufacturing applications, "quality" is often defined as conformance to specifications or as meeting standards on … the performance of the product. In the marketing and economics literature, "quality" typically refers to the performance …

-off between quality and quantity. In particular, lowering product quality enables firms to increase total production. We … illustrate that, in the presence of limited capacity, the choice of lower quality often results in increased social welfare. We … also explore the relation between the extent of competition and the choice of quality. We find that, in some cases, reduced …

This paper provides a theoretical explanation for why firms behave as though they use round prices to signal quality …. By replacing the linear demand curve in Bagwell and Riordan's (1991) price as a signal of quality model with a kinked …) Firms that are using high prices to signal quality are more likely to set those prices at round numbers, and (2) price …

different health-care delivery services--we show that the processing speed of service workers is influenced by the system load … overwork is associated with a reduction in quality of care in cardiothoracic surgery--an increase in overwork by 10% is …