When should a necessary inconvenience be introduced gradually, and when should it be imposed all at once? The question is crucial to web content providers, who in order to generate revenue must sooner or later introduce advertisements, subscription fees, or other inconveniences. Assuming that...

We analyze the problem that enterprises face when having to decide on the most effective way to advertise several items belonging to their inventories within the company’s webpages. We show that the ability to arbitrarily partition a website among items leads to a comparative advantage among...