Pricing And Technology Adoption In Markets With Imperfect Competition

This dissertation extends the economics literature in industrial organization with two essays on firms' pricing strategies and technology adoption in imperfectly competitive markets. The first essay focuses on the modeling and analysis of the effect of competition on price dispersion in markets with firm capacity constraints and consumer brand loyalty. The second essay explores the evolution of learning and uncertainty in consumers' adoption of a new technology. Given that price is an important factor in consumers' purchase decisions, the exploration of the pricing and adoption issues mentioned above provides insights into both the demand side and the supply side decisions. The analyses are applied to the U.S. biotech and seed industry.