I present the idea that imperfect information about the (vertical) quality characteristics of goods reduces the sellers' incentives for horizontal product differentiation. As a result, the equilibrium outcome may be characterized by "minimum differentiation." In a spatial framework this implies...

Bargaining between a single seller and a succession of potential bu yers of an indivisible object is studied in this paper. The seller bargains with one buyer at a time and switching buyers is costly. The seller does not know the buyers' reservation prices and buyers cannot observe the quality...

Consider a market where an informed monopolist sets the price for a good or as set with a value unknown to potential buyers. Upon observing the price, buyers may pay some cost for information about the value before deciding on purchases. To restrict buyer beliefs we generalize the idea of the...

This paper views authority as the right to undertake decisions that impose externalities on other members of the organization. When only decision rights can be contractually assigned to one of the organization's stakeholders, the optimal assignment minimizes the resulting inefficiencies by...

We consider mechanisms for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation, and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough, then...

This paper examines the commitment effect of delegated bargaining when renegotiation of the delegation contract cannot be ruled out. We consider a seller who can either bargain face-to-face with a prospective buyer or hire an intermediary to bargain on her behalf. The intermediary is able to...

This paper studies a bargaining model of equilibrium price distributions. Consumers choose a seller at random and face s earch costs to switching to another store. In the market equilibrium, the prices at all stores are determined simultaneously as the perfec t equilibrium of a bargaining game....

We study the location equilibrium in Hotelling's model of spatial competition. As d'Aspremont et al. (1979) have shown, with quadratic consumer transportation cost the two sellers will seek to move as far away from each other as possible. This generates a coordination problem which the...