We study the design of efficient liability in expert markets. An expert may misbehave in two ways: prescribing the "wrong" treatment for a consumer's problem, or failing to exert proper effort to diagnose the problem. We show that under a range of liabilities, the expert will choose the...

This paper analyzes welfare under differential versus uniform pricing across oligopoly markets that differ in costs of service. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions on demand properties---cross/own elasticities and curvature---for differential pricing by symmetric firms to raise...

We analyse a two-period model in which a monopolistic seller may adopt behavior-based price discrimination (BBPD) and charge consumers different prices based on their purchasing histories. We show that if there is quality uncertainty and prices convey valuable information about product quality,...

When providing professional services, an expert may misbehave by either prescribing ``wrong'' treatment for consumer's problem or failing to exert proper effort to diagnose it. We show that under a range of liabilities the expert will recommend the appropriate treatment based on his private...

We analyze a credence goods market where the expert may have a high or low cost in repairing a major problem, under the assumptions that i) the expert is liable for the outcome of the treatment (liability), and ii) the type of treatment is (or is not) verifiable by the consumer (verifiability)....

We analyze the interaction between the signaling role of prices and a monopolist's incentive to use behavior-based pricing (BBP) in a two-period model with quality uncertainty. We obtain the novel insight that BBP increases the price elasticity of imitation demand, lowers the signaling cost...

When procuring multiple products from competing firms, a buyer may choose separate purchase, pure bundling, or mixed bundling. We show that pure bundling will generate higher buyer surplus than both separate purchase and mixed bundling, provided that trade for each good is likely to be...

We study a credence goods market in which an expert holds private information about his treatment cost besides his superior knowledge about the nature of the consumer’s problem. Under the assumption of liability, cheating may occur through overcharging—a price for major treatment is charged...

This paper analyzes the efficiency of team production when agents exhibit other regarding preferences. It is shown that full efficiency can be sustained as an equilibrium through a budget-balancing mechanism that punishes some randomly chosen agents if output falls short of efficient level but...

We formalize a conception of authority, which is commonly defined as the right of controlling a person's actions embedded in human assets in sociology. Due to the inalienable property of human assets, the contractible formal authority is hard to verify and enforce, while real authority usually...