When manufacturers collude to raise wholesale prices for national brands, the input prices of store brands may not be directly affected, either as they are procured competitively from different sources or as retailers are vertically integrated. In this article we explore both conceptually and...

Firms frequently offer refunds, both when physical products are returned and when service contracts are terminated prematurely. We show how refunds act as a "metering device" when consumers learn about their personal valuation while experimenting with the product or service. Our theory predicts...

Manufacturers constantly make decisions that crucially affect product quality, e.g., through procuring high-quality inputs or maintaining high hygienic standards in production. We show fi rst how a high price for its product increases a manufacturer s incentives, so that there is a positive...

I take an efficient contracting approach to answer the question how much "job protection" to offer employees, in particular those at the top of organizations. Given their privileged information or formal authority, senior managers who are not given such protection are likely to take...

An important question for firms in dynamic industries is how to induce a CEO to reveal information that the firm should change its strategy, in particular when a strategy change might cause his own dismissal. We show that the uniquely optimal incentive scheme from this perspective consists of...

This paper argues that a commitment to 'shallow pockets', namely by limiting the size of funds raised initially, may improve an investor's ability to deal with entrepreneurial agency problems. Shallow pockets allow the investor to create competition for continuation finance between her portfolio...

If shareholders are prone to excessive risk-taking, delegating the project choice to a manager with conflicting interests may reduce the agency cost of debt. The extent to which this delegation is credible, however, depends on the shareholders' ability to commit not to overrule the manager's...

Economic evidence that seeks to evaluate the effect of an infringement is typically presented as a point-estimate of the effect along with its statistical significance. Such evidence alone, however, is often of little value to the judge, in particular if it is impossible for her to infer whether...

An upstream supplier constrained by downstream competition and the threat of demand-side substitution faces a trade-off between maximizing overall joint-profit and extracting surplus. By inducing more intra-brand competition through lower wholesale prices, the supplier makes it less attractive...