In a duopoly model of horizontal and vertical differentiation, where consumers are ex-ante unaware of product qualities, we study the firms' incentives to signal quality via prices. Consumers, after they observe prices, can evaluate a firm's product quality before purchase if they incur a search...

We consider a principal-agent model to provide a general analysis of how risk affects incentives of firms who invest in cost-reducing R&D and compete in the product market. We specify the conditions under which higher risk reduces incentives of all firms. We also examine the conditions under...

Minimum quality standards (MQS) constitute an important regulatory tool that can be used to raise product qualities, to benefit consumers and to increase market participation. One of the main assumptions in the existing literature is that firms must comply with standards. Nevertheless, in many...

We introduce a flexible third-degree price discrimination framework by modeling the information firms possess about consumers' locations (preferences) on the Salop circle as a partition. Higher information quality is translated into a partition refinement. In the limit, we obtain the perfect...