We present an economic model of fixing or patching a software problem after the product has been released in the market. Specifically, we model a software firm’s trade-off in releasing a buggy product early and investments in fixing it later. We first show that patching investments and time to...

Interviews with low-level drug dealers in New York City reveal that the monetary costs of distributing drugs are modest. Hence, the proportion of sales revenue retained by these sellers is a meaningful indicator of their earnings. There are four distinct types of sellers, with systematic...

Spreadsheets are commonly used and commonly flawed, but it is not clear how often spreadsheet errors lead to bad decisions. We interviewed 45 executives and senior managers / analysts in the private, public, and non-profit sectors about their experiences with spreadsheet quality control and with...

Background: There is ongoing interest in assessing the effectiveness of various drug control strategies, including policy intended to reduce initiation and prevalence. Compartmental models of trajectories of drug use have been developed that demonstrate that drug “systems” display...

This paper presents a dynamic game model of international terrorism. The time horizon is finite, about the size of one presidency, or infinite. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of incentive Stackelberg strategies for both decision-makers of the game (“The West” and “International...

Markets for illicit drugs present an interesting case study for economics, combining non-standard characteristics such as addiction and product illegality. One response has been to argue the generality of economic principles by suggesting that they apply even in the extreme case of markets for...

Illicit drug use is clearly an important health problem. There are some 600,000 emergency department episodes in the US every year that are related to illicit drugs (SAMHSA, 2002a). National mortality estimates are not available, but there are probably on the order of 20,000 drug-induced deaths...

There is consensus in the literature that spreadsheets are both ubiquitous and error-prone, but little direct evidence concerning whether spreadsheet errors frequently lead to bad decision making. We interviewed 45 executives and senior managers/analysts in the private, public, and non-profit...

Cellular telephony and associated data services has been a major socialphenomena for well over a decade now. It has changed the way - in somecountries more than others - in which people communicate. In manycountries in Northern Europe and Asia, its penetration rates are veryhigh and in others...

In spite of industry concerns, prior work has shown that Internet used book markets do not significantly cannibalize new book sales. In this research note we analyze similar data from markets for CDs and DVDs, goods that because of their digital characteristics may be more susceptible to...