We present a signalling model, based on ideas of Phillip Nelson, in which both the introductory price and the level of directly "uninformative" advertising or other dissipative marketing expenditures are choice variables and may be used as signals for the initially unobservable quality of a...

We investigate the conventional wisdom that competition among interested parties attempting to influence a decision maker by providing verifiable information brings out all the relevant information. We find that, if the decision maker is strategically sophisticated and well informed about the...

The performance of the Japanese economy in the last forty five years, during which it has gone from post war destitution and near collapse to one of the richest and most productive in the world is unmatched in human history. The purposes of this essay are to interpret both the characteristic...

The LeChatelier principle, in the form introduced into economics by Paul A. Samuelson, asserts that, at a point of long-run equilibrium, the derivative of long-run compensated demand with respect to own price is larger in magnitude than the derivative of short-run compensated demand. The authors...

The authors explore the current state of the theory of the firm, with attention to its historical origins. Answers to the crucial theoretical question of why an organization c ontrolled by a central authority cannot always duplicate the performa nce of a decentralized organization are presented....