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作者：Chao, Yong; Tan, Guofu; Wong, Adam Chi Leung
作者单位：University of Louisville; University of Southern California; Lingnan University
摘要：We investigate the strategic effects of all-units discounts (AUDs) used by a dominant firm in the presence of a capacity-constrained rival. Due to the limited capacity of the rival, the dominant firm has a captive portion of the buyer's demand for the single product. As compared to linear pricing, the dominant firm can use AUDs to go beyond its captive portion by tying its captive demand with part of the competitive demand and partially foreclose its small rival. When the rival's capacity leve...
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作者：Dana, James D., Jr.; Spier, Kathryn E.
作者单位：Northeastern University; Harvard University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：With imperfect private monitoring, a firm selling two experience goods can increase both producer and consumer surplus by bundling. Bundling constrains consumers to buy two products, making consumers better informed and ensuring that they use tougher punishment strategies. Both increased monitoring and increased punishment benefit other consumers, so bundling overcomes a free-rider problem. The social value of bundling is even larger if consumers cannot attribute a negative signal to the speci...
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作者：Garcia, Daniel; Shelegia, Sandro
作者单位：University of Vienna; Pompeu Fabra University
摘要：This article studies observational learning in a consumer search environment. Consumers observe the purchasing decision of a predecessor with similar preferences. Consumers rationally emulate by initiating their search at the firm from which their predecessor purchased, free-riding on search effort, and reacting less to price changes. Prices are nonmonotone in search costs and may be as low as marginal costs. We discuss several extensions and show that the effect of emulation on prices is stro...
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作者：Biglaiser, Gary; Li, Fei
作者单位：University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
摘要：We examine the role of a middleman as an expert in markets. A seller's effort determines the quality of the good. Buyers observe neither the seller's effort nor the good's quality. A middleman, after observing a signal about the good's quality, decides whether to purchase it and then to sell it. We show that the presence of a middleman may either reduce or exacerbate the seller's moral hazard problem. We also consider a model with multiple middlemen. We find that the seller's effort is minimiz...
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作者：Willems, Bert; Zwart, Gijsbert
作者单位：Tilburg University; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; University of Groningen
摘要：We model the regulation of irreversible capacity expansion by a firm with private information about capacity costs, where investments are financed from the firm's cash flows and demand is stochastic. The optimal mechanism is implemented by a revenue tax that increases with the price cap. If the asymmetric information has large support, then the optimal mechanism consists of a laissez-faire regime for low-cost firms. That is, the firm's price cap corresponds to that of an unregulated monopolist...
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作者：Shiller, Benjamin; Waldfogel, Joel; Ryan, Johnny
作者单位：Brandeis University; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要：Ad blocking software allows Internet users to obtain information without generating ad revenue for site owners, potentially undermining investments in content. We explore the impact of site-level ad blocker usage on website quality, as inferred from traffic. We find that each additional percentage point of site visitors blocking ads reduces its traffic by 0.67% over 35 months. Impacted sites provide less content over time, providing corroboration for the mechanism. Effects on revenue are compo...
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作者：Li, Xing; MacGarvie, Megan; Moser, Petra
作者单位：Peking University; Boston University; New York University
摘要：Copyrights create long-lived intellectual property in goods ranging from science, literature, and music to news, film, and software. The economic effects of copyright, however, are difficult to identify in modern settings. This article exploits an unintended differential increase in copyright length under the UK Copyright Act of 1814in favor of books by dead authorsto examine the effects of longer copyright terms on price. We find that a doubling in copyright length was associated with a subst...
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作者：Kastl, Jakub; Pagnozzi, Marco; Piccolo, Salvatore
作者单位：Princeton University; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Naples Federico II; University of Bergamo
摘要：Internal agency conflicts distort firms' choices and reduce social welfare. To limit these distortions, principals dealing with privately informed agents often acquire information from specialized intermediaries, such as auditing and certification companies, that are able to ascertain, and credibly disclose, agents' private information. We study how the structures of both the information provision and the final good markets affect information accuracy. A monopolistic information provider may s...
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作者：Petrikaite, Vaiva
作者单位：Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Institut d'Analisi Economica (IAE); Barcelona School of Economics
摘要：This article shows that a multiproduct firm has incentives to obfuscate its products by using search costs to induce consumers to search through its products in a particular order. The consumers who draw high valuations of the first product terminate their search earlier than the consumers who draw low valuations. Thus, the firm has incentives to raise the price of the earlier searched product. The optimal search cost for an obfuscated product is such that consumers inspect the product only if...
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作者：Galasso, Alberto; Schankerman, Mark
作者单位：University of Toronto; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR)
摘要：We study the causal impact of patent invalidation on subsequent innovation and exit by patent holders. The analysis uses patent litigation data from the US Federal Circuit Court and exploits random allocation of judges to control for endogeneity of the decision. Invalidation causes patent holders to reduce patenting over a five-year window by 50% on average, but the effect is heterogeneous. The impact is large for small- and medium-sized firms, particularly where they face many large competito...
