One striking development associated with the explosion of e-commerce is the increased transparency of sellers' quality history. In this paper we analyze how this affects firms' incentives to invest in quality when the outcome of investment is uncertain. We identify two conflicting effects. On...

I study the effects of minority equity ownership by firms in their trade partners. Passive ownership promotes relationship-specific investments by both parties and increases the joint surplus. The relative attractiveness of partial backward vs. forward ownership depends on the specific nature of...

One striking development associated with the explosion of e-commerce is the increased transparency of sellers' quality. In this paper we analyze how this affects firms' incentives to invest in quality when the outcome of investment is uncertain. We identify two conflicting effects. On the one...