IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/penntw/a3e3219aee004bd237f8112f9e924401.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who Wants a Good Reputation?

Author

Listed:
  • George J. Mailath
  • Larry Samuelson

Abstract

We examine a market in which long-lived firms face a short-term incentive to exert low effort, but could earn higher profits if it were possible to commit to high effort. There are two types of firms, "inept" firms who can only exert low effort, and "competent" firms who have a choice between high and low effort. There is occasional exit, and competent and inept potential entrants compete for the right to inherit the departing firm's reputation. Consumers receive noisy signals of effort choice, and so competent firms choose high effort in an attempt to distinguish themselves from inept firms. A competent firm is most likely to enter the market by purchasing an average reputation, in the hopes of building it into a good reputation, than either a very low reputation or a very high reputation. Inept firms, in contrast, find it more profitable to either buy high reputations and deplete them or buy low reputations.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • George J. Mailath & Larry Samuelson, "undated". "Who Wants a Good Reputation?," Penn CARESS Working Papers a3e3219aee004bd237f8112f9, Penn Economics Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:cla:penntw:a3e3219aee004bd237f8112f9e924401
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.upenn.edu/Centers/CARESS/
    Download Restriction: no

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Steven Tadelis, 1999. "What's in a Name? Reputation as a Tradeable Asset," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(3), pages 548-563, June.
    2. George J. Mailath & Larry Samuelson, "undated". "Your Reputation Is Who You're Not, Not Who You'd Like To Be," Penn CARESS Working Papers bb1b279d6539c9ed3b83a027c, Penn Economics Department.
    3. repec:wsi:wschap:9789812818478_0012 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Aoyagi, Masaki, 1996. "Reputation and Entry Deterrence under Short-Run Ownership of a Firm," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 411-430, May.
    5. Douglas Gale & Robert W. Rosenthal, 1994. "Price and Quality Cycles for Experience Goods," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(4), pages 590-607, Winter.
    6. Drew Fudenberg & David Levine & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem With Imperfect Public Information," World Scientific Book Chapters,in: A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 12, pages 231-273 World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cla:penntw:a3e3219aee004bd237f8112f9e924401. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (David K. Levine). General contact details of provider: http://www.dklevine.com/ .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.