We explore a dynamic, competitive model for experience goods and study an equilibrium for it in which firms plan initially to produce high quality at low price, then high quality at high price, then low quality at high price. Each consumer is aware that all firms eventually intend to run down...

The establishment of an asking, or ceiling, price from which reductions can be bargained is a common selling practice. For a monopolist seller of a single object, this article characterizes the best such ceiling price and shows that its use is optimal among all incentive-compatible mechanisms in...

We develop a symmetric-information auction model of multiproject contracting with costly bidding and increasing marginal performance costs. When there are many potential contractors or only one job, there is a zero-expected-profit symmetric equilibrium in mixed strategies. The winning bid at...

type="main" <p>A firm surveys a large number of consumers, some of whom sincerely report their tastes and others of whom report strategically. It makes product decisions using the sample mean of survey responses. When firms and consumers agree on the fraction of sincere consumers, information loss...</p>

We study optimal contracting under imperfect commitment in a model with an uninformed principal and an informed agent. The principal can commit to pay the agent for his advice but retains decision-making authority. Under an optimal contract, the principal should (i) never induce the agent to...

We study the information content of stock reports when investors are uncertain about a financial analyst's incentives. Incentives may be aligned, in which case the analyst wishes to credibly convey information, or incentives may be misaligned. We find the following: Any investor uncertainty...

Price dispersion is ubiquitous in settings that closely approximate textbook Bertrand competition. We show that only a little bounded rationality among sellers is needed to rationalize such dispersion. A variety of statistical tests, based on datasets from two independent laboratory experiments...