Reputation Effects in Gold Glove Award Voting

Reputation effects have been thought to influence how candidates in an election are viewed by the electorate. Using data from Major League Baseball, I attempt to quantify the effect that reputation plays in voting for the Gold Glove award. While the award is designed to reflect current-year defensive accomplishments, two other hypotheses have been suggested to explain voting behavior. The first is that voters use current-year offensive accomplishments in lieu of defensive accomplishments. The second hypothesis is that voters rely on the past performance of the players when casting their ballots, implying that reputation effects exist in the minds of voters. Results from probit estimation show that while reputation effects appear to have a significant effect on the outcome of the election, current-year offensive accomplishments do not.Voting behavior, baseball

Spaced Out Monopolies: Theory and Empirics of Alternating Product Releases

An oft-neglected pattern of behavior occurs when firms time the release of their products so that they are not released on the same date. The practice is potentially collusive, so there may be legitimate antitrust concerns. This paper presents a model of this behavior, the alternating periods monopoly (APM). A comparison of the APM with other sustainable methods of collusion shows the conditions under which the APM is preferred. I develop an empirical test to detect the APM, and use data from the baseball card industry to investigate the possible use of an APM.Noncooperative strategies, alternating periods monopoly, duration analysis

Survival in a Declining Industry: The Case of Baseball Cards

The baseball card industry provides a case study of survival in a declining industry. The case study shows how manufacturers have varied their strategic behavior in response to changes that have occurred within the industry in the last 20 years. This is in stark contrast to most of the existing theoretical literature on behavior in declining industries, which assumes that behavior remains constant throughout the decline phase of an industry.Declining industry, case study, baseball cards

A Theory of Jump Bidding in Ascending Auctions

Jump bidding is a commonly observed phenomenon that involves bidders in ascending auctions submitting bids higher than required by the auctioneer. Such behavior is typically explained as due to irrationality or to bidders signaling their value. We present field data that suggests such explanations are unsatisfactory and construct an alternative model in which jump bidding occurs due to strategic concerns and impatience. We go on to examine the impact of jump bidding on the outcome of ascending auctions in an attempt to resolve some policy disputes in the design of ascending auctions.auction theory, ascending auctions, jump bidding

Naming your own price mechanisms: Revenue gain or drain?

We experimentally study the profitability of pricing mechanisms that allow customers to quote their own prices, such as Priceline.com's "Name-Your-Own-Price" (NYOP). Presumably firms find this sales method profit-maximizing despite the concerns that NYOP websites can cannibalize profit from standard distribution channels. Using a laboratory experiment we compare outcomes between NYOP and posted-price settings. We find that NYOP mechanisms that do not conceal information about products increase profit and consumer surplus. When NYOP channels conceal information about products there is no significant change in profit unless the threshold above which bids are accepted is set near marginal cost, whereby profit decreases.Name-Your-Own-Price mechanism Priceline Reverse pricing Laboratory experiment

More Information, More Ripoffs: Experiments with Public and Private Information in Markets with Asymmetric Information

Asymmetric information, Laboratory experiment, Lemons market, Posted-offer, Two-sided multilateral negotiations, D82, C91,

More Information, More Ripoffs: Experiments with Public and Private Information in Markets with Asymmetric Information

It is well known that asymmetric information can be a catalyst for producing a lemons market. What is much less well known is how different institutional arrangements and their concomitant information conditions affect the lemons outcome. We conduct a laboratory experiment to examine the role that two different types of markets—two-sided multilateral negotiations and posted offers—play in an environment with sufficient conditions to yield a lemons outcome. We also investigate the effect that publicly available prices and advertisements have on buyers and sellers in a posted-offer market

An experimental test of alternative models of bidding in ascending auctions

D44, C90, auction theory, ascending auctions, jump bidding,

War of Attrition: Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment on Market Exit

We report an experiment designed to study whether ine cient rms are systematically driven from overcrowded markets. Our data set includes series of 3800 wars of attrition of a type modeled in Fudenberg and Tirole (1986). We nd that exit tends to be e cient and exit times conform surprisingly well to point predictions of the model. Moreover, subjects respond similarly to implementations framed in terms of losses as they do to those framed in terms of gains