durable goods and product obsolescence the issue of product obsolescence is addressed by examining the optimal sales strategy of a monopolist firm that may introduce an improved version of its current product consumers expectations of a forthcoming product lowers the price that they are willing to pay for the current product because of its loss in value due to obsolescence the new product is characterized by consumers increased willingness to pay and by its competitive interaction with the old product these characteristics affect the tradeoff that the firm makes between the cost of waiting for new product sales versus the cost of cannibalizing these sales we analyze the effect of these characteristics of the new product on the firm s optimal sales strategy we consider the various policy measures available to the firm including limiting initial sales in order to lower cannibalization of the new product buying back the earlier version of the product in order to generate greater demand for the new product and announcements of future product introductions we find that for modest levels of product improvement the firm s optimal policy is to phase out sales of the old product while for large improvements a buy back policy is more profitable lastly we find that the firm is better off if it informs consumers whether a new product is forthcoming

choosing price or quantity the role of delegation and network externalities we consider a differentiated duopoly and endogenise the firm choice of the strategy variable price or quantity to play on the product market in the presence of network externalities we model this choice by assuming both competition between entrepreneurial owner managed firms and competition between managerial firms in which market decisions are delegated from owners to revenue concerned managers while network externalities are shown not to alter the symmetric equilibrium quantity choice arising in the no delegation case sufficiently strong network effects allow us to eliminate the multiplicity of equilibria under delegation and lead to a unique equilibrium in which both firms choose price

evolutionary stability in games of communication abstract this paper identifies evolutionarily stable outcomes in games in which one player has private information and the other takes a payoff relevant action the informed player can communicate at little cost outcomes satisfying a set valued evolutionary stability condition must exist and be efficient in common interest games when there is a small cost associated with using each message the outcome preferred by the informed player is stable the paper introduces a nonequilibrium set valued stability notion of entry resistant sets for games with partial common interest the no communication outcome is never an element of an entry resistant set journal of economic literature classification numbers c72 d82

communication structure and coalition proofness experimental evidence abstract the paper analyzes the role of the structure of communication i e who is talking with whom in a coordination game we run an experiment in a three player game with pareto ranked equilibria where a pair of players has a profitable joint deviation from the pareto superior equilibrium we show that specific communication structures lead to different coalition proof equilibria in this game results match the theoretical predictions subjects communicate and play the pareto superior equilibrium when communication is public when pairs of players exchange messages privately subjects play the pareto inferior equilibrium even in these latter cases however players beliefs and choices tend to react to messages despite the fact that these are not credible

welfare improving vertical separation with network externality considering the interplay between network externalities and the degree of product substitutability in a vertical structure we compare the outcomes of vertical integration and vertical separation in contrast to previous results we show that when both products are sufficiently close substitutes there is a threshold level of the network externality parameter beyond which vertical separation is more efficient than vertical integration this is due to the internalization of the network externality by a multiproduct monopolist which in the balance between the extensive and intensive margin leads to higher output prices

common marketing agency as a device for facilitating collusion in a variety of markets firms voluntarily and independently delegate control over certain aspects of marketing to common agents in this article we present an explicit model of agency delegation where firms noncooperatively select agents name output prices and choose compensation schemes we exhibit an equilibrium in which all strategic variables not merely the marketing choices delegated to agents but prices as well are selected perfectly cooperatively this cooperative equilibrium is very simple and attractive each firm sets the collusive output price and employs a commission scheme to compensate the agent although each

foundations of dynamic monopoly and the coase conjecture subgame perfect equilibria are characterized for a market in which the seller quotes a price each period assume zero costs positive interest rate continuum of buyers and some technical conditions if buyers valuations are positive then equilibrium is unique buyers strategies are stationary and the price sequence is determinant along the equilibrium path but possibly randomized elsewhere otherwise a continuum of stationary equilibria can exist but at most one with analytic strategies coase s conjecture is verified for stationary strategies reducing the period length drives all prices to zero or the least valuation connections to bargaining models are described journal qf economic literature classification

reputation and imperfect information abstract a common observation in the informal literature of economics and elsewhere is that is multistage games players may seek early in the game to acquire a reputation for being tough or benevolent or something else but this phenomenon is not observed in some formal game theoretic analyses of finite games such as selten s finitely repeated chain store game or in the finitely repeated prisoners dilemma we reexamine selten s model adding to it a small amount of imperfect or incomplete information about players payoffs and we find that this addition is sufficient to give rise to the reputation effect that one intuitively expects

a theory of credibility this paper presents models in which one agent must decide whether to trust another whose motives are uncertain reliability can only be communicated through actions in this context it pays for people to build a reputation based on reliable behaviour someone becomes credible by consistently providing accurate and valuable information or by performing useful services the theory provides a justification for long term arrangements without binding contracts it also describes those situations where it pays an agent to cash in on his reputation many decisions depend on trusting someone consumers must decide whether to believe advertisements banks need to judge the reliability of loan applicants and employers must decide how much responsibility to delegate to their employees this paper attempts to model situations that arise when someone is uncertain about whether to trust the people he deals with in this context reputations for reliability are valuable an agent becomes credible by consistently providing accurate valuable information or by always acting responsibly i analyse a series of simple abstract models of information transmission in the basic model there are two agents the sender s and the receiver r who are to play the game a known finite number of times at each stage both players learn the value of a parameter measuring the importance of that period s play of the game that is the value of making a correct decision and s obtains payoff relevant information s then sends a signal to r who makes a decision that affects the welfare of both players after both players learn the consequences of r s decision the process repeats at each stage r must decide what action to take in order to do that he must assess the credibility of s the difficulty arises because r is uncertain about s s preferences when play begins i model this by assuming that with positive probability s has identical preferences to r s is a friend and with positive probability s has completely opposed preferences to r s is an enemy this uncertainty creates a trade off for enemy senders at each stage providing honest information enhances s s reputation but only at the expense of foregoing an opportunity for immediate gain by duping r the possibility that s is a friend lends credibility to what he says but this credibility may also be exploited by an enemy s the principal equilibrium has the following form in the basic model where s has no control over the importance of a given play s typically conveys accurate information for the first several periods r raises the probability he places on s being friendly after receiving accurate information if he believes that an enemy would have lied to him with positive probability the more important the information the more likely an enemy will attempt to deceive r an enemy will eventually take advantage of r by misleading him when this happens the sender loses all opportunities for deception in the future i

a theory of ambiguity credibility and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information this paper develops a positive theory of credibility ambiguity and inflation under discretion and asymmetric information the monetary policymaker maximizes his own politically motivated objective function that is positively related to economic stimulation through monetary surprises and negatively related to monetary growth the relative importance he assigns to each target shifts stochastically through time his current preference trade off is known to him but not to the public when choosing the state contingent path of money growth for the present and the future the policymaker compares the benefits from current stimulation with the costs associated with higher future inflation expectations current monetary growth conveys information to the public about future money growth because there is persistence in the policymaker s objectives although expectations are rational information is imperfect because monetary control procedures are imprecise as a result the public cannot correctly distinguish persistent changes of emphasis on different policy objectives from transitory monetary control errors the public becomes aware of changes gradually by observing past monetary growth credibility is defined in terms of the speed with which the public recognizes changes in the objectives of the policymaker credibility is lower the noisier monetary control and the more stable the objectives of the policymaker looser monetary control and a higher degree of time preference on the part of the policymaker induce him to produce higher and more variable monetary growth when the policymaker is free to determine the accuracy of monetary control he does not always choose the most effective control available in spite of the fact that monetary surprises always have an expected value of zero the reason is that ambiguous control procedures enable the policymaker to generate positive surprises when he cares more than on average about economic stimulation he leaves the inevitable negative surprises for periods in which he cares more about inflation prevention this result provides an explanation for the fed s preference for ambiguity recently documented by goodfriend 1986 the policymaker is more likely to pick more ambiguous control procedures the more uncertain his objectives and the higher his time preference the paper also provides a theoretical underpinning for the well documented crosscountry positive correlation between the level and the variability of inflation

consumer habituation this paper examines how consumers willingness to pay for goods is determined by past patterns of consumption the central result is atheorem of interior maximum which states that willingness to pay for a good is maximized at a moderate level of habitual consumption the theorem is derived from a simple model of adaptive behavior that involves a shifting s shaped value function the detailed analysis of the impact of consumption frequency and intensity on willingness to pay reveals an unsuspected implication of diminishing sensitivity even as it leads to a formalization of consumer habituation patterns including sensitization habituation and response recovery upon withdrawal that matches and integrates the most robust empirical regularities attendant on nonassociative learning in neurobiology and behavioral psychology an examination of the implications for demand dynamics and pricing highlights deterministic recurrent and transient patterns of consumption at higher price points

vertical restraints and producers competition this paper examines the rationale for vertical restraints it shows that there are important circumstances under which these restrictions have significant anti competitive effects the paper focuses on the consequences of exclusive territorial arrangements among the retailers of two products which are imperfect substitutes such arrangements are shown to increase consumer prices under plausible conditions the increase in consumer prices is sufficiently large to more than offset the deleterious effects from double marginalization resulting from reduced competition among retailers the imposition of exclusivity provisions is may be part of a nash equilibrium among producers these results hold whether there are or are not franchise fees this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

signaling strategies in competitive interaction building reputations and hiding the truth abstract the authors develop a conceptual framework of how managers interpret competitors signals over time in various market contexts from the framework the authors generate hypotheses about the relative effectiveness of signaling strategies used by firms in different market contexts the authors conducted two empirical studies involving a repeated entry pricing game to test the hypotheses the results of study 1 show that the entrant s perceptions of the aggressiveness of the incumbent depend on the focus and strength of the incumbent s signals the results of study 2 show that the strength of the entrant s responses to the incumbent s signals depends on the incumbent s use of bluffs and the cost of information about the factors driving the incumbent s signals the implications of these findings for how firms should signal to achieve such strategic objectives as revealing or concealing information developing a desired reputation and influencing competitors responses over time are discussed the au

market segmentation self selection and product line design the purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of market segmentation based on consumer self selection the extant theory is based on the third degree price discrimination model of pigou central assumptions of which are that the firm can directly address individual segments and isolate them by using consumer self selection i am relaxing these assumptions in the context of a monopolist designing a product line i show that this relaxation has significant implications for how the products and prices are chosen and what they look like in particular segments may be aggregated even though there are no economies of scale furthermore consumer self selection enables us to model cannibalization and competition among firms

high powered incentives and communication failure this paper uses a donor provider agent framework to study the role of provider incentives for the delivery of developmental goods like aid credit or technology transfer to the poor the paper considers a situation where credible communication by the provider is the key to successful delivery the study shows that the use of high powered incentives can lead to breakdown of communication between providers and agents leading to undesirable outcomes the paper studies the interplay between incentives and communication in the presence of typical and motivated providers and finds that in certain situations incentivization leads to worse outcomes

stock market reactions to customer and competitor orientations the case of initial public offerings recognizing that initial public offerings ipos represent the debut of private firms on the public stage this study investigates how pre ipo customer and competitor orientations ccos affect ipo outcomes building on information economics we propose that ccos influence investors sentiments toward an ipo and that both ipo specific variables which influence the credibility of cco information and facets of the organizational institutional and task environments which influence the appropriateness of cco information moderate this influence we test the framework using data collected from computer aided text analysis expert coders and secondary sources for 543 ipos across 43 industries between 2000 and 2004 a bayesian shrinkage model which accounts for industry specific effects and uses latent instrumental variables to address cco endogeneity shows that ccos positively influence ipo outcomes furthermore 1 underwriter reputation and venture funding positively moderate the effects of ccos 2 technological and market turbulence positively and institutional complexity negatively moderate the effect of customer orientation and 3 technological turbulence competitive intensity and institutional complexity positively moderate the effect of competitor orientation also accounting for endogeneity using latent instrumental variables substantially improves the predictive validity of the model relative to alternative model specifications

the dynamic pricing of next generation consumer durables learning curve effects aspects of consumer demand models e g reservation price distributions intertemporal utility maximizing behavior and competitive activity are reasons which have been offered to explain why prices of new durables decline over time this paper presents an alternative rationale based on the buying behavior for products with overlapping replacement cycles i e next generation products a model for consumer sales of a new durable is developed by incorporating the replacement behavior of a previous generation product pricing strategies for two product generations are investigated analytically and with numerical methods results indicate that durable replacement behavior leads to a wider set of optimal pricing strategies than previously obtained several empirical illustrations of industry pricing practices for successive product generations are also shown to be consistent with the theoretical results finally various areas for future research are outlined

intimidating competitors endogenous vertical integration and downstream investment in successive oligopoly this paper examines the interplay of endogenous vertical integration and cost reducing downstream investment in successive oligopoly analyzing a linear cournot model we establish the following key results i vertical integration increases own investment and decreases competitor investment intimidation effect ii asymmetric integration is a non degenerate equilibrium outcome iii compared to a benchmark model without investment complete vertical separation is a less likely outcome we argue that these findings generalize beyond the linear cournot model under reasonable assumptions

your network or mine the economics of routing rules in many markets including payment cards and telecommunications service providers operate networks that support customer transactions with each other when the two sides of a transaction belong to more than one network in common the question arises as to which network will carry the transaction we show that the answer depends on a combination of who has the formal authority to choose and the parties network subscription decisions our central finding is that granting formal authority to one side of the market can increase the extent to which transactions run over the network preferred by the other side of the market we also characterize competing networks equilibrium choices of routing rules and prices

cheap talk and the fed a theory of imprecise policy announcments this paper examines the problem faced by the federal reserve in announcing its private information about its future policies because it would like to manipulate expectations and pursue a time inconsistent policy the fed cannot reveal its policy objectives precisely and credibly it can however communicate some information about its goals through the cheap talk mechanism of vincent crawford and joel sobel making announcements that are imprecise and only giving ranges within which these goals may lie copyright 1989 by american economic association

excess sensitivity of consumption to income growth a model of loss aversion the article provides an empirical test on micro data of a model of individual behavior based on loss aversion utility is s shaped i e concave above reference consumption and convex below it as a consequence individuals do not reduce current consumption in response to an expected income decline as long as uncertainty is high enough such a behavior is consistent with excess sensitivity of consumption to income growth an empirical regularity which is hard to explain within a standard life cycle model loss aversion is tested on an italian dataset the bank of italy s survey on households income and wealth the conclusion is that excess sensitivity could be explained by a model that do not assume individuals to be expected utility maximizers copyright 2009 oxford university press

one quarter of gdp is persuasion economists view talk as cheap and culture as insignificant yet humans are talking animals talking in their markets the talk probably matters why else would the human animals bother doing it the usual economic view of the talk is that it issues orders and conveys information workers at gm are ordered to report for work tomorrow credit ratings are conveyed economic analysis takes these parts of the talk into account without fuss production theory can be viewed as the theory of one mind issuing orders much of game theory is concerned in one way or another with information though game theory as joseph farrell 1995 and others have found requires more than bits of information but issuing the orders and conveying the information does not account for all of the talk the third part of the economic talk is persuasion

the efficiency of competing vertical chains with network externalities abstract this paper compares vertical integration and vertical separation with network externalities contrary to conventional wisdom if network effects are stronger than the threshold level of the network externality parameter manufacturers strategic choices of wholesale prices move in opposite directions i e wholesale prices may be strategic substitutes under bertrand competition second if the strength of network effects is strong enough both profits and outputs are larger under vertical separation than under integration finally if network effects are strong weak outputs wholesale prices retail prices consumer surplus and social welfare are higher lower under separation than integration

cheap talk coordination and entry we show how costless nonbinding nonverifiable communication cheap talk can achieve partial coordination among potential entrants into a natural monopoly industry where the payoffs are qualitatively like the battle of the sexes the analysis would apply equally in other economic situations with such payoffs for example bargaining under complete information or choosing compatibility standards while cheap talk helps achieve asymmetric coordination in a symmetric mixed strategy equilibrium it cannot achieve complete coordination if the game involves even a small amount of conflict

talk is cheap although friedrich a von hayek leonid hurwicz and others stressed how the price system communicates private information on preferences technology and endowments our main means of communication is surely words but it is unclear whether mere words can be trusted absent outside sanctions for lying such as perjury law or a valuable reputation for honesty talk is cheap the perspective of the standard theory of signaling seems to suggest that cheap talk should be uninformative but this is misleading cheap talk can sometimes convey information and affect real payoffrelevant actions yet cheap talk s power is limited for example even given an unlimited chance to talk rational people may not reach an equilibrium or may not escape a bad one a growing literature in game theory political science and economics which i cannot survey here studies what cheap talk can and cannot do here i merely sketch some themes

cheap talk can matter in bargaining this paper describes an intuitive way in which cheap talk can matter in a twostage bargaining game in which talk may be followed by serious negotiation the intuition that all buyers would claim to have low reservation prices is incorrect in our model instead if good faith participation is endogenously determined then the parties can use talk to trade off bargaining position against the probability of continued negotiation our cheap talk equilibrium features bargaining behavior that could not be equilibrium behavior in the absence of talk

an economic theory of vertical restraints vertical restraints imposed by manufacturers on the prices locations and sales of retail firms represent a puzzling departure from the simple price mediated exchange of conventional markets in this article we analyze the theoretical basis for these restraints in a setting where retailers inform consumers and are imperfectly competitive and where a manufacturer has some monopoly power we identify three potential externalities affecting retailers decisions these externalities lead to the failure of simple uniform price contracts to coordinate the incentives of retailers with the objective of maximizing combined manufacturer and retailer profits we identify the packages of vertical restraints that are minimally sufficient under various conditions to neutralize the externalities and to achieve the joint profit maximum

product market competition and boundaries of the firm this paper studies the effects of product market competition on firm boundaries in a duopoly setting each retailer is associated with a manufacturer who must decide how to allocate property rights over a retail asset delegating property rights over the retail asset to an indepedent retailer disintegration transfers incentives from the manufacturer to the retailer and has the benefit of increasing product quality and profits owing to the retailer s superior efficiency however it also forces the manufacturer to forfeit part of the profits competition increases the net benefit from delegation and leads to more efficient vertically disintegrated structures cet article etudie la concurrence sur le marche des produits et ses effets sur les limites de l entreprise dans un modele de duopole chaque producteur associea un distributeur choisit soit une structure verticale integree dans laquelle le distributeur est son employe soit une structure desintegree dans laquelle le distributeur est independant plus efficace en termes d incitations au distributeur la structure desintegree genere des profits joints plus importants elle oblige cependant le producteur a partager les profits avec le distributeur la concurrence augmente le benefice et reduit le cout de la desintegration favorisant ainsi des structures verticales desintegrees et efficaces

to blame or not to blame analysts reactions to external explanations for poor financial performance abstract managers often provide self serving disclosures that blame poor financial performance on temporary external factors results of an experiment conducted with 124 financial analysts suggest that when analysts perceive such disclosures as plausible they provide higher earnings forecasts and stock valuations than if the explanation had not been provided however we also show that these disclosures can backfire if analysts find them implausible specifically implausible explanations that blame poor performance on temporary external factors lead analysts to provide lower earnings forecasts and assess a higher cost of capital than if the explanation had not been provided

adverse selection in durable goods markets we present a dynamic model of adverse selection to examine the interactions between new and used goods markets we find that the used market never shuts down the volume of trade can be large and distortions are lower than previously thought new cars prices can be higher under adverse selection than in its absence an extension to several brands that differ in reliability leads to testable predictions of the effects of adverse selection unreliable brands have steeper price declines and lower volumes of trade we contrast these predictions with those of a model where brands physically depreciate at different rates

increasing quality sequence when is it an optimal product introduction strategy in this paper we analyze the optimal introduction timing of a seller s products targeted at segments that differ in their willingness to pay for quality past studies suggest that an introduction sequence of a high quality product followed by a lower quality version of the product may mitigate the cannibalization effects of the low quality product on profits from the high quality product we show that if customers who value quality more possess an outside option such as a substitute product as may be the case with replacement buyers a seller may find it optimal to follow a low quality product with a higher quality one the latter being targeted at replacement buyers furthermore the ability of the seller to commit to future qualities accentuates the sequential increase in quality in the presence of such buyers thus we show that conditions other than uncertainty or technological improvements occurring over time may justify a seller adopting a strategy of sequentially increasing quality this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing

international macroeconomic policy coordination when policymakers do not agree on the true model the authors relax the assumption of the literature on international coordination that policymakers know the true model t wo countries will still be able to agree on a cooperative policy pack age that each believes will improve the objective function relative t o the nash noncooperative solution however the bargaining solution may move the target variables in the wrong direction these points ar e illustrated with monetary and fiscal multipliers taken from simulat ions of ten leading econometric models out of 1 000 possible combina tions of models that could represent u s beliefs non u s beliefs and the true model monetary coordination improves u s welfare in on ly 546 cases copyright 1988 by american economic association

quality distortion by a discriminating monopolist the standard model of monopolistic imperfect quality discrimination involving consumer self selection has shown that no distortion occurs at the highest quality level while all lower quality levels are degraded in order to maintain profitable market segmentation this result flows from the assumption that consumers with a higher total utility of quality also have a higher marginal utility of quality the paper develops a reasonable model in which the standard assumption is not satisfied and this alternative model yields vastly different conclusions regarding the form of quality distortion in particular quality may be enhanced not degraded to maintain profitable market segmentation copyright 1989 by american economic association

the strategic value of high cost customers many firms today manage their existing customers differentially based on profit potential providing fewer incentives to less profitable customers and firing unprofitable customers although researchers and industry experts advocate this practice results have been mixed we examine this practice explicitly accounting for competition and find that some conventional prescriptions may not always hold we analyze a setting where customers differ in their cost to serve we find that when a firm can discriminate among its customers but the rival cannot customer base composition influences the rival s poaching behavior consequently even though a low cost customer is more profitable when viewed in isolation a high cost customer may be strategically more valuable by discouraging poaching therefore contrary to conventional advice it can be profitable for a firm to retain unprofitable customers moreover some customers may become more valuable to retain and receive better incentives when they are less profitable we further show that in competitive settings traditional customer lifetime value metrics may lead to poor retention decisions because they do not account for the competitive externality that actions toward some customers impose on the cash flows from other customers our results suggest that firms may need to evolve from a segmentation mindset which views each customer in isolation to a customer portfolio mindset which recognizes that the value of different customers is interlinked this paper was accepted by j miguel villas boas marketing