Published Articles
Schmidbauer, Eric and Dmitry Lubensky (forthcoming). "List prices and 'hot' real estate markets". Real Estate Economics. Presentation slides.
Martinez-Carrasco, Miguel A., Eric Schmidbauer and John Hamman (2025). ``Project selection with biased advice: an experiment on competitive cheap talk,'' Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol 232, 106936. Presentation slides.
Yang, Jianxia, Eric Schmidbauer and Lan Zhang (2023). ``Partial Cross Ownership, Exclusive Contracting, and Market Entry,'' Economics Letters, 226, 111048.
Arnold, Michael, Eric Schmidbauer and Lan Zhang (2022). "Uniform and targeted informative advertising with asymmetric customer loyalty," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 31(1), 90-114.
Ashoori, Minoo, Eric Schmidbauer, and Axel Stock (2020). "Availability as a Signal for Quality in a Market with Word-of-Mouth Communication," Review of Marketing Science, 18(1), 99-115.
Lubensky, Dmitry and Eric Schmidbauer (2020). "Free Product Trials: Disclosing Quality and Match Value," Economic Inquiry, 58(4), 1565-1576. Presentation slides.
Schmidbauer, Eric (2019). "Budget Selection when Agents Compete," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 158: 255-68. Presentation slides.
Schmidbauer, Eric and Axel Stock (2018). "Quality Signaling via Strikethrough Prices," International Journal of Research in Marketing, 35(3), 524-532.
Lubensky, Dmity and Eric Schmidbauer (2018). "Equilibrium Informativeness in Veto Games," Games and Economic Behavior, 109, 104-125. Older working paper version with treatment of the full parameter range (referenced in footnote 8). Presentation slides.
Schmidbauer, Eric and Dmitry Lubensky (2018). "New and Improved?", International Journal of Industrial Organization, 56C, 26-48. Presentation slides.
Schmidbauer, Eric (2017). "Multi-period competitive cheap talk with highly biased experts," Games and Economic Behavior, 102, 240-254. Presentation slides.
Working Papers
"Uncertainty and Experimental Pricing: When Fixed Costs Matter'' (with Lan Zhang). Presentation slides.
We analyze experimental pricing with fixed costs in a two-period Bayesian learning model. A monopolist prices its product while learning about its marginal cost through first-period sales, as in insurance markets with uncertain loss probabilities or firms adopting new production processes. When consumer willingness to pay is independent of the cost uncertainty, the firm's second-period profit is convex in the loss rate, making learning valuable and leading to lower first-period prices. Conversely, when willingness to pay depends on cost uncertainty, learning can reduce firm profit, incentivizing higher first-period prices to limit sales and thus consumer updating. In both cases, fixed costs matter through the option to exit, which links first-period sales to the continuation value. The resulting comparative statics are nonmonotonic: higher fixed costs can either strengthen or weaken incentives to experiment. Our findings provide a rational foundation for observed deviations from marginal-cost pricing in industries where learning and fixed costs are important.
Works in Progress
"When sellers care about buyer identity and usage".
“Love Letters: Persuasion in Auctions” (with Ralph Boleslavsky).
"When should firms promote learning? An experimental study" (with Brock Stoddard and Lan Zhang).
Painfully condensed summary of each of my published papers
List prices and hot real estate markets: when sellers must accept bids at or above list price, bids are discontinuous at the list price and more buyers induce a higher sales-to-list price ratio, matching “hot” market patterns.
Project selection with biased advice...: experimentally, biased experts misrepresent more when competition is high but are more truthful when low-quality projects are common or provide little benefit.
Partial Cross Ownership, Exclusive Contracting, and Market Entry: offering partial cross ownership to an incumbent can thwart its ability to exclude an entrant through exclusive contracting.
Uniform and targeted informative advertising...: pricing and advertising strategies interact in interesting ways with the size of different market segments.
Availability as a Signal for Quality...: word-of-mouth effects and consumers' desire for exclusive consumption experiences affect the firm's optimal signaling strategy.
Free product trials: free trials cause more favorable beliefs about quality but give consumers private information about their match value, so sometimes firms won't allow them.
Budget selection when agents compete: A "bloated" budget can be rational because it reduces competition between selfish experts thereby inducing more truth-telling.
Quality signaling via strikethrough prices: A low price now is bad news about quality unless the firm can prove it was able to charge a high price before.
Equilibrium informativeness in veto games: When an expert gives take-it-or-leave-it advice that also restricts your choices, lots of things can happen but you’re probably better off than if your choices were unrestricted.
New and improved: Because it’s expensive to make and sell new products, if the firm bothered to release them they usually are improved over their predecessors.
Multi-period competitive cheap talk: When selfish experts compete and are forward looking they won’t act completely selfish.