RAND Journal of Economics articles from June 2003

RAND Journal of Economics archives from June 2003

An experimental comparison of reliance levels under alternative breach remedies.
June 22, 2003... Breach remedies serve an important role in protecting relationship-specific investments. Theory predicts that some common remedies protect too well and induce overinvestment, either though complete insurance against potential separation or the...

Supplier surfing: competition and consumer behavior in subscription markets.
June 22, 2003... I explore the practice of offering subscribers enticements to switch suppliers. This type of competition is natural in subscription markets for homogeneous goods and services. Efficiency is impaired because subscribers are induced to expend...

Leasing, lemons, and buybacks.
June 22, 2003... In his seminal article of 1970, Akerlof argued that the used-car market is not efficient because adverse selection causes too little trade. We construct a competitive model of the new- and used-car markets and investigate the relationship...

Price and quality competition under adverse selection: market organization and efficiency.
June 22, 2003... Firms compete with prices and qualities in markets where consumers have heterogeneous preferences and cost characteristics. Consumers demand two goods, which can be supplied jointly or separately by firms. We consider two strategy regimes for...

The effects of mergers in open-auction markets.
June 22, 2003... The buyer solicits bids from suppliers with different cost distributions defined by their capacities. The expected market share of each supplier is the ratio of its capacity to the industry capacity. The buyer's optimal reserve price declines...

Introduction.(Editorial)
June 22, 2003... In January 2001, the Institut d'Economie Industrielle (IDEI) sponsored a conference at the University of Toulouse (France) on "The Economics of the Internet and Software Industries." The goal of the conference was to take stock of the...

Chicken & egg: competition among intermediation service providers.
June 22, 2003... We analyze a model of imperfect price competition between intermediation service providers. We insist on features that are relevant for informational intermediation via the Internet: the presence of indirect network externalities, the...

The winner's curse, reserve prices, and endogenous entry: empirical insights from eBay auctions.
June 22, 2003... Internet auctions have recently gained widespread popularity and are one of the most successful forms of electronic commerce. We examine a unique dataset of eBay coin auctions to explore the determinants of bidder and seller behavior We first...

Ownership and control rights in Internet portal alliances, 1995-1999.
June 22, 2003... We examine the structure of more than 100 alliances by Internet portals and other firms between 1995 to 1999 from a contract-theory perspective. Models of incomplete contracts frequently invoke unforeseen contingencies, the cost of writing...

Internet interconnection and the off-net-cost pricing principle.
June 22, 2003... We develop a framework for Internet backbone competition. In the absence of direct payments between websites and consumers, the access charge allocates communication costs between websites and consumers and affects the volume of traffic. We...

Antitrust limits to patent settlements.
June 22, 2003... Patents, patent litigation, and patent settlements increasingly influence competition. Settlements of patent disputes come in many forms, including licensing and cross-licensing agreements, patent pools, mergers, and joint ventures. While...