This dissertation comprises three chapters, each focusing on a different question in economic theory. The first two chapters focus on repeated games and reputations, while the third is about large games. In "Cooperation and Community Responsibility", I study whether cooperation can be sustained between communities where members interact repeatedly but...
Consumers' willingness-to-pay can change over time and can change differently for different consumers. Rational and forward-looking consumers incorporate this into their decision making. This dissertation examines the implication of such change in several dynamic IO settings.
The first chapter looks at a durable goods monopoly setting where consumers' valuations decline...
My primary interest is in markets as aggregators of information. To study this I create a benchmark market-microstructure model of sequential trading on posted prices. I have a competitive market maker and rational profit-maximizing traders with different tastes over a single asset and heterogeneous information over its value. The differences...
This thesis encompasses the work on bid-price controls for network revenue management and a dynamic model of revenue management with strategic consumers. The first line of research studies the circumstances under which bid-price controls are optimal or near optimal with minimal assumptions on the network topology and the stochastic structure...
This dissertation contains three essays that investigate various factors affecting firms' choice of quality in the context of nursing homes.
The first essay examines how strategic interactions with competitors affect quality levels selected by nursing homes. I explore nursing homes' responses to minimum nurse staffing standards imposed in two large...
I examine how consumers' purchase' decisions and intentions of purchases are affected by uncertainty about future deals (temporary price cuts or sales) for a product and how these results affect retailers' optimal pricing and marketing strategies. First I look at the effects of uncertainty about the timing of deals (i.e....
This dissertation contains three essays that look at competition, entry and capacity spectrum investment of wireless telecommunication firms in the U.S. The first two essays (Chapters 1-2) examine wireless firm's entry decision while the final essay studies their investment behavior.
The first essay examines how wireless firm compete against each...
This dissertation investigates how public disclosure of quality information affects the behavior of firms. The first chapter uses a quality disclosure policy, the Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI), to examine how quality "report cards" affect firms' choices of multidimensional product quality. I show that after the introduction of NHQI: (1)...
This dissertation consists of three essays in applied microeconomics. In the first chapter, I introduce a new statistical test for identifying prejudice from empirical data. In the second chapter, I (joint with James Schummer) consider the revenue maximization problem for a two-sided, one-to-one matching platform. In the third chapter, I...
This dissertation focuses on policy issues in the area of Economics of Innovation. As developed countries are becoming increasingly reliant on innovation for economic growth, it is important to enhance our understanding of how public policies affect innovation.
The first chapter examines the effect of government research grants on firms'...