Cheats are a pervasive threat to public goods production in natural and human communities, as they benefit from the commons without contributing to it. Although ecological antagonisms such as predation, parasitism, competition, and abiotic environmental stress play key roles in shaping population biology, it is unknown how such stresses generally affect the ability of cheats to undermine cooper...

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This paper argues that the different symbolic meanings of goods give rise to three institutionally market types. We start from realization consumption has meaning, which individuals use communicate and construct their identity social networks. argue firm behavior (including size, pricing marketing strategies) must be congruent with meaning goods. distinguish between two stylized goods, status t...

T act of trading in a used car as partial payment for a new car resonates with practically all consumers. Such transactions are prevalent in many other durable goods markets, ranging from golf clubs to CT scanners. What roles do trade-ins play in these markets? What motivates the seller to set up a channel to facilitate trade-ins? Intuitively, accepting a trade-in would appear to stimulate dema...

This paper studies the economic determinants of the inter-sectoral allocation of skills within an R&Dbased growth model with human capital accumulation. I find that steady-state growth is driven only by incentives to accumulate skills and is independent of scale effects. In the model imperfect competition has a positive growth effect, while influencing the allocation of human capital to the dif...

This paper develops a hedonic-price growth model where Superstar rewards induce patterns of innovation, learning, and income mobility and inequality. The model provides one formalization of how consumer attitudes towards knowledge-like goods (e.g., computer software) influence the latter’s creation and dissemination, and thereby economic growth and income distribution dynamics. The model can be...

This paper analyses the policy implications of licensing between producers of differentiated goods. We consider and compare two-part tariff, fixed fee, royalty and collusive licensing contracts. Under the optimal licensing policy, there will be no technology transfers if the innovation size is sufficiently small and degree of product differentiation is sufficiently low. On the other hand, licen...

Acquiring a reputation for high quality is especially urgent for producers in markets for durable goods with quality characteristics that remain uncertain over the product’s life. Using data from the U.S. automobile industry, our empirical evidence shows that a poor reputation associated with U.S. autos during the early 1980’s has persisted in reducing prices of more recent models, despite qual...

This paper identifies a flaw in the infant industry argument that previous literature has ignored. A simple model first replicates the infant industry logic but subsequently shows that, in the presence of a ‘traditional technology’ with poor growth potential, the infant-industry logic is likely to fail. Under protectionism domestic producers substitute advanced technologies with the low-growth ...

I study two-sided markets where the platform is composed of components supplied by di¤erent producers. I examine a producer’s incentive to provide compatibility of its product with other suppliers’. Two models are considered. In the …rst model, I …nd that tying of a complementary product may be pro…table. In the second model, I …nd that a durable goods monopolist’s introduction of incompatibili...