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Digital Rights Management and the Pricing of Digital Products

Scotchmer, Suzanne; Park, Yooki - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2005

As it becomes cheaper to copy and share digital content, vendors are turning to technical protections such as encryption. We argue that if protection is nevertheless imperfect, this transition will generally lower the prices of content relative to perfect legal enforcement. However, the effect...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005778863

Consumer Beliefs and Buyer and Seller Behavior in the Vehicle Inspection Market

Hubbard, Thomas N. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 1997

' condition to increase the short-run demand for the treatments they" supply. The California vehicle emission inspection market … individual firms face is sensitive to inspection outcomes. Consumers are 30% more" likely to return to a firm at which they … regarding the probability they fail at individual firms Bayesian update using two to three inspection outcomes at each firm. …

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005829631

Asymmetric Learning in Repeated Contracting: An Empirical Study

Cohen, Alma - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

This paper studies a unique panel dataset of transactions with repeat customers of an insurer operating in a market in which insurers are not required by law or contract to share information about their customers' records. I use this dataset to test the asymmetric learning hypothesis that...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005575389

Pricing and Welfare in Health Plan Choice

Levin, Jonathan; Bundorf, M. Kate; Mahoney, Neale - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2008

Prices in government and employer-sponsored health insurance markets only partially reflect insurers' expected costs of coverage for different enrollees. This can create inefficient distortions when consumers self-select into plans. We develop a simple model to study this problem and estimate it...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005710694

Competition and R&D Financing Decisions: Theory and Evidence from the Biopharmaceutical Industry

Lo, Andrew W.; Thakor, Richard T. - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2015

R&D-intensive firms such as biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies follow very different corporate financial policies from firms in less R&D-intensive industries. To account for these differences, we propose an equilibrium model for such firms in which their capital structure, amount of R&D...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011159903

The Limits of Reputation in Platform Markets: An Empirical Analysis and Field Experiment

Nosko, Chris; Tadelis, Steven - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2015

We argue that reputation mechanisms used by platform markets suffer from two problems. First, buyers may draw conclusions about the quality of the platform from single transactions, causing a reputational externality across sellers. Second, for a variety of reasons we discuss, reputations will...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011264927

Market Structure, Reputation, and the Value of Quality Certification

Elfenbein, Daniel; Fisman, Raymond; McManus, Brian - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2014

Quality certification programs help consumers to identify high-quality products or sellers in markets with information asymmetries. Using data from eBay UK's online marketplace, we study how certification's impact on consumer demand varies with market- and seller-level attributes, exploiting...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010950765

How the Internet Lowers Prices: Evidence from Matched Survey and Auto Transaction Data

Zettelmeyer, Florian; Morton, Fiona Scott; Silva-Risso, … - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2005

There is convincing evidence that the Internet has lowered the prices paid by some consumers in established industries, for example, term life insurance and car retailing. However, current research does not reveal much about how using the Internet lowers prices. This paper answers this question...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005084562

The Credit Ratings Game

Bolton, Patrick; FREIXAS, XAVIER; Shapiro, Joel - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2009

The spectacular failure of top-rated structured finance products has brought renewed attention to the conflicts of interest of Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs). We model both the CRA conflict of understating credit risk to attract more business, and the issuer conflict of purchasing only the most...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005778634

$1000 Cash Back: Asymmetric Information in Auto Manufaturer Promotions

Busse, Meghan; Zettelmeyer, Florian; Silva-Risso, Jorge - National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) - 2004

Automobile manufacturers make frequent use of promotions that give cash-back payments. Two common types of cash-back promotions are rebates to customers, which are widely publicized to potential customers, and discounts to dealers, which are not publicized. While the payments nominally go...

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10005778801