Comparative Warranty Law: Case of Planned Obsolescence

Competitive planned obsolescence

The incentives that durability offers to a monopolist to price discriminate over time and the related difficulties that secondhand markets create in these situations have been well recognized in the economics literature. The conventional problem for the monopolist is that, having sold a durable good, there is an incentive to reduce price later to bring into the market those consumers who would ...

Implied Warranty Against Latent Defects: A Historical Comparative Law Study

Planned Obsolescence and the Provision of Unobserbable Quality

This paper develops the idea that obsolescence acts as an incentive device to provide quality for experience goods. The argument is that obsolescence affects the frequency at which consumers repurchase products and may punish producers for a lack of quality. A higher rate of obsolescence enables a firm to convince its consumers that it provides high quality. We identify a trade–off between qual...

The Planned Obsolescence of the Humanities: Is It Unethical?

The humanities have not enjoyed preeminence in academe since the Scientific Revolution marginalized the old trivium. But they long continued to play a subordinate educational role by helping constitute the distinguishing culture of the elite. Now even this subordinate role is becoming expendable as devotees of the profit motive seek to reduce culture to technological delivery of cultural produc...

The Limits of Planned Obsolescence for Conspicuous Durable Goods

An extensive body of literature argues for the benefits of planned obsolescence, the strategy of designing products with low durability to induce repeat purchases from the consumers. Yet, some firms avoid planned obsolescence and instead offer products with high durability. In this paper, we offer a demand-side rationale for a high-durability product design strategy: exclusivity-seeking consume...