Despite recent advancements in user-driven social media platforms, tools for studying user behavior patterns and motivations remain primitive. We highlight the voluntary nature of user contributions and that users can choose when (and when not) to contribute to the common media pool. A Game theoretic framework is proposed to study the dynamics of social media networks where contribution costs a...

Requiring agents with private information to select from a menu of incentive schedules can yield efficiency gains. It will do so if, and only if, agents will receive further private information after selecting the incentive schedule but before taking the action that determines where on the incentive schedule they end up. We argue that this information structure is relevant in many applications....

The two critical factors distinguishing inventory management in a multifirm supply-chain context from the more traditional centrally planned perspective are incentive conflicts and information asymmetries. We study the well-known order quantity/reorder point (Q r) model in a two-player context, using a framework inspired by observations during a case study. We show how traditional allocations o...

I study optimal incentive contracting when a temporary project is overseen by a firm with access to two channels of information about the project’s state a noisy public news process, and the reports of a manager possessing superior private information. The firm faces the decision problem of when to wrap up the project, as well as the agency problem of a manager with borrowing constraints and in...

This article studies the optimal prices and service quality grades that a queuing system---the ‘‘ firm”---provides to heterogeneous, utility-maximizing customers who measure quality by their experienced delay distributions. Results are threefold: First, delay cost curves are introduced that allow for a flexible description of a customer’s quality sensitivity. Second, a comprehensive executable ...

" Some… may think that there should be no patents on software-related inventions. Whatever the merits of this position, the debate in the U.S. has shifted from this issue to that of patent quality. " Samuelson (2004, p. 23) To gain competitive advantage in an increasingly digital economy many firms engage in costly research and development activities to develop innovative software applications....

Crowdsourcing markets, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, provide a platform for matching prospective workers around the world with tasks. However, they are often plagued by workers who attempt to exert as little effort as possible, and requesters who deny workers payment for their labor. For crowdsourcing markets to succeed, it is essential to discourage such behavior. With this in mind, we propo...

Introduction In modern economics, it has been quite obvious that, as a prerequisite for success, firms have to design incentive methods to encourage workers to put more effort into their work. Incentive schemes, e.g. bonuses or pay-by-results, are widespread. Human resource managers, however, are preoccupied with trying to identify the “best” plan. Many different factors are involved in determi...

Reward anticipation is associated with activity in the dopaminergic midbrain as well as the ventral striatum, amygdala, and medial prefrontal cortex. Dopaminergic neuromodulation declines with age, suggesting that incentive processing should also undergo age-related change. However, the literature is mixed, perhaps reflecting variation in the degree to which tasks made demands on learning and m...

We study optimal equilibria in multi-player games. An equilibrium is optimal for a player, if her payoff is maximal. A tempting approach to solving this problem is to seek optimal Nash equilibria, the standard form of equilibria where no player has an incentive to deviate from her strategy. We argue that a player with the power to define an equilibrium is in a position, where she should not be ...