Information goods are essentially public goods as soon as they are made available in digital form on the Internet. Therefore, firms (or providers) of informations goods are forced to consider alternative payment schemes to eliminate the free rider problem. The present paper introduces a...

Within a production theoretic framework, this paper considers an axiomatic approach to benchmark selection. It is shown that two simple and weak axioms: efficiency and comprehensive monotonicity characterize a natural family of benchmarks which typically becomes unique. Further axioms are added...

In the present paper, the existence of maximal elements for binary relations are studied. Generalized lexicographic relations are introduced, and some results on existence of maximal elements are provided. A simple example shows that economies with "lexicographic consumers" need not have...

We develop a model of price formation in a dealership market where monitoring of the information flow requires costly effort. The result is imperfect monitoring, which creates profit opportunities for speculators who pick off "stale quotes". Externalities associated with monitoring give rise to...

This paper studies how strategic interaction between players can influence their decisions as to whether to acquire information and whether to reveal their private information to others. We show how a player can increase his utility by disclosing part of his private information, when such...

We analyse the conditional versions of two closely connected mean-variance investment problems, the replication of a contingent claim on the one hand and the selection of an efficient portfolio on the other hand, in a general discrete time setting with incomplete markets. <p> We exhibit a positive...</p>