This dissertation comprises three essays on theoretical and empirical issues in industrial organization. Chapter 1 outlines the issues explored in the subsequent chapters and briefly describes their conclusions.Chapter 2 explores how product differentiation impacts the incentive compatibility...

The evaluation of policy-relevant economic research requires an ethical foundation.Classical liberal theory provides the requisite foundation for this dissertation, which usesvarious econometric tools to estimate the effects of shifting some of the property tax frombuildings to land in 15 cities...

Experimental observations have shown that economic agents behave in ways different from the maximization of any utility function. Herbert Simon sought to deal with this by positing that individuals do not maximize, but rather satisfice. This was a radical departure from the traditional economic...

This dissertation comprises three essays on theoretical analysis of middlemen in intermediated markets. Chapter 1 gives a brief survey on the market intermediation literature and also briefly describes the subsequent chapters.In Chapter 2 I study the role of horizontally differentiated middlemen...