An upstream manufacturer can use minimum resale price maintenance (RPM) to exclude potential competitors. RPM lets the incumbent manufacturer transfer profits to retailers. If entry is accommodated, upstream competition leads to fierce down-stream competition and the breakdown of RPM. Hence, via...

Resale price maintenance (RPM), slotting fees, loyalty rebates and other related vertical practices can allow an incumbent manufacturer to transfer profits to retailers. If these retailers were to accommodate entry, upstream competition could lead to lower industry profits and the breakdown of...

Classic models of reputation consider an agent taking costly actions to affect a single, homogeneous audience’s beliefs about his ability, preferences or other characteristic. However, in many economic settings, agents must maintain a reputation with multiple parties with diverse interests. In...

We consider borrowers with the opportunity to raise funds from a competitive banking sector that shares information, as well as from other hidden lenders. The presence of hidden lenders allows borrowers to conceal poor results from their banks and, thus, restricts the contracts that can be...

Resale price maintenance (RPM), slotting fees, loyalty rebates and other related vertical practices can allow an incumbent manufacturer to transfer profits to retailers. If these retailers were to accommodate entry, upstream competition could lead to lower industry profits and the breakdown of...

The degree of competition that a rm faces affects its ability to commit to goodbehavior. However, the relationship need not be monotonic since competition affectsthe pro ts when committed to good behavior (such as efficient high quality) and badbehavior as well as the short-term profits from...

Agents work for their own reputations when young but for their firms when old. An individual with an established reputation cannot credibly commit to exerting effort when working alone. However, by hiring and working with juniors of uncertain reputation, seniors will have incentives to exert...

An increasingly important organisational design problem for many firms is to recoup general human capital rents while maintaining attractive career prospects for workers. We explore the role of information management in this context. In our model, an information management policy determines the...

In a spatial model of both horizontal and vertical differentiation where an agent can occupy an interval rather than a point on the Hotelling line, one can examine the trade-off between depth (a narrow high quality position) and breadth (a wide low quality range). In particular, the extent of...

Goods and services vary along a number of dimensions independently. Customers can choose to acquire information to assess the quality of some dimensions and not others. Their choices affect firms incentives to invest in quality and so lead to indirect externalities in consumers choices. We...