Evolution and disruption of galaxies orbiting in the gravitational field of a larger cluster galaxy are driven by three coupled mechanisms: 1) the heating due to its time dependent motion in the primary; 2) mass loss due to the tidal strain field; and 3) orbital decay. Previous work demonstrated that tidal heating is effective well inside the impulse approximation limit. Not only does the overa...

Recent rapid growth in electronic book sales has raised a critical question for publishers and bookstores: do e-books cannibalize or increase print sales? In this article, we compare the best-selling titles sold on www.Amazon.com in print or electronic Kindle formats during the period from November 2007 to July 2010. Using econometric methods, we find that the cannibalization of print sales by ...

We develop a two-stage model for versioning products with respect to both vertical and horizontal attributes. At first, a firm positions its top-quality “flagship” product in a market with an imperfectly known distribution of tastes and reservation prices. In the second stage, the firm learns these consumer characteristics and has the option of extending its product line by versioning the flags...

In this paper we consider a retailer's product line selection and pricing problem. We use a consumer choice model in which individuals have stochastic utility for each product and act to maximize their consumer surplus. We consider three basic problems: (1) A retailer who has a current product line with xed prices and who is considering the addition of a new model to the product line. The retai...

Bacterial populations can evolve and adapt to become diverse niche specialists, even in seemingly homogeneous environments. One source of this diversity arises from newly 'constructed' niches that result from the activities of the bacteria themselves. Ecotypes specialized to exploit these distinct niches can subsequently coexist via frequency-dependent interactions. Here, we describe a novel fo...

We develop a game-theoretic framework to investigate the competitive implications of consumer-to-consumer electronic marketplaces, which promote concurrent selling of new and used goods. In many e-marketplaces, where suppliers cannot directly use second-hand goods for practicing inter-temporal price discrimination, the threat of cannibalization of new goods by used goods become significant. We ...

The widespread use of the Internet has led to the emergence of numerous information intermediaries that bring buyers and sellers together and leverage their knowledge of the marketplace to provide value added services. Infomediaries offer matching services that facilitate establishment of a buyer-seller agreement, and value-added services that either provide a stand-alone benefit or enhance ben...

Daily deal websites help small local merchants to attract new consumers. A strategy adopted by some websites is to continually track and display the number of deals sold by a merchant. We investigate the strategic implications of displaying deal sales and the website's incentive to implement this feature. We analyze a market in which a merchant o ering an experience good is privately informed o...