The decision to cooperate within R&D joint ventures is often based on expert advice. Such advice typically originates in a due-diligence process, which assesses the R&D joint venture's profitability, for example, by appraising the achievability of synergies. We show that if the experts who...

We design an experiment to explore how geography shapes exchange between spatially distant markets and hypothesize that geographical isolation of traveling intermediaries from stationary sources of production creates social isolation that hinders trade. We characterize our economies with a...

This paper presents an experimental test of a 2-player, one-shot game of conflict in which we vary the strength of property rights and the return on investment. Our results suggest that stronger property rights reduce conflict and increase investment. Contrary to intuition, we find increasing...

This paper formalizes the intuition that brands are consumed for image reasons and that advertising creates a brand's image. The key idea is that advertising informs the public of brand names and creates the possibility of conspicuous consumption by rendering brands a signalling device. In a...

A safe and risky seller serve a market. While the expensive safe seller can solve the problems of all consumers, the cheap risky seller can help a consumer only with a certain probability. The risky seller's success probabilities are distributed across consumers; by the choice of her quality the...

Homogeneous products are often sold by chains and locals but the chains charge higher prices. We explain this pricing pattern as well as the empirical fact that chains became increasingly dominant at the same time as consumer mobility increased: Consumers bear setup costs whenever they visit a...

It is well-known that a monopolist cannot commit to offer a high-quality contract to a consumer reading costs are positive. This paper shows that this also holds in a competitive environment with consumer heterogeneity if the contract space is unrestricted. If firms can offer standardized...

This paper studies profit-maximizing seller behavior when brand image affects demand. We consider a seller facing a population of consumers with heterogeneous tastes regarding product quality and brand image. First, we analyze active branding by the seller through costly advertising. Our...

This paper studies welfare consequences of consumer-side market transparency with endogenous entry of firms. Different from most studies, we consider the unique symmetric entry equilibrium, which is in mixed strategies. We identify two effects of market transparency on welfare: a competition...

In markets for credence goods, such as doctor visits, customers sample a firm for a few periods, before deciding whether to retain or fire that firm. In our model, customers have endogenously determined patience in tolerating bad outcomes from credence-good providers. The more competitive the...