We model decisions to apply for a job or admission, attend an audition, or run for office as costly entry in contests where the outcomes solely depend on entrants' talent or ability. Player ability is privately known and players generically differ in commonly-known characteristics such as...

Many firms divide the price a consumer pays for a good into two pieces---the price for the item itself and the price for shipping and handling. With fully rational customers, the exact division between the two prices is irrelevant---only the total price matters. We test this hypothesis by...

We conducted 80 auctions on eBay. Forty of these auctions were for various popular music CDs while the remaining 40 auctions were for video games for Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. The revenue equivalence theorem states that any auction form having the same effective reserve price yields the...

The market structure of platform competition is critically important to managers and policy makers. Network effects in these markets predict concentrated industry structures, whereas competitive effects and differentiation suggest the opposite. Standard theory offers little guidance — full...