Two Words, One Answer.
seller's reputation
 Seller Reputation $67.00 Seller Reputation introduces a unifying framework that embeds a number of different approaches to seller reputation, incorporating both hidden information and hidden action. This framework is used to stress that the way in which consumers learn affects both behavior and outcomes. In particular, the extent to which information is generated and socially aggregated determines the efficiency of markets. After reviewing these theoretical building blocks, Seller Reputation examines several applications and empirical concerns. It highlights that the environment in which a transaction is embedded helps determine whether the transaction will occur and how parties will behave. Institutions, ranging from the design of online markets to norms in a community, can be understood as ensuring that concerns for reputation lead to more efficient outcomes. Similarly, the desire to affect consumer beliefs regarding the firm's incentives can help us understand strategic firm decisions that seem unrelated to the particular transactions they wish to promote. Seller Reputation concludes by considering slightly different models of reputation that lie beyond the scope of this framework, briefly reviewing the somewhat sparse empirical literature and suggesting future directions for research.  Love on a Pillow (Le Repos Du Guerrier) $9.98 A young woman named Genevieve Le Theil (Brigitte Bardot) while on a trip to Dijon to claim an inheritance accidently opens the wrong hotel door and finds a man named Renaud Sarti (Robert Hossein) lying unconscious on a bed. He has attempted suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. Her intervention saves his life. One would think he would be grateful and perhaps fall in love with his beautiful benefactress. What happens is just the opposite. She falls into a kind of obsessive, almost masochistic, love with him, but all he feels for her is indifference. He spends her money, drinks to excess, abuses her verbally and emotionally. But she can't let him go regardless of what he does. Yes, this is a familiar premise, and frankly I would not have stuck around long enough to see how it plays out except for Brigitte Bardot. If you haven't seen her, you might want to watch this just to take a look at her. She is strikingly beautiful and amazingly sexy. She has pretty, almost perfect features and a soft and sweet way about her; but perhaps the most arresting thing about her is her figure. It is absolutely exquisite. She was a sensation in the fifties not only in France but in the US as the quintessence of the "sex kitten," in some ways even more so than, say, Marilyn Monroe or Tuesday Weld. Roger Vadim, who would later direct Jane Fonda in Barbarella (1968) was married to Bardot at the time this movie was made. (He would later marry Jane Fonda.) Like some other French directors, Vadim liked to make movies which amounted to adorations of the beautiful young star. See Roman Polanski with, e.g., Nastassja Kinski in Tess (1979); Krzysztof Kieslowski with Irene Jacob in La Double vie de Vronique (1991) and Trois couleurs: Rouge (1994); and Andre Techine, with Juliette Binoche in Rendez-vous (1985) for some comparisons. Naturally if you make movies in which the camera adores the young actress and shows her in her best light, you are going to attract young actresses! Here Vadim directs in a studied manner designed to not only show off Bardot's exquisite beauty but to highlight her ability as an actress. Although not among the first rank as actresses go, Bardot performs well here. Perhaps this is her best film. She is elegantly dressed and coiffured, and Vadim treats us to many close ups of her lovely face. (If there is a more beautiful woman in filmdom, I haven't seen her.) But don't expect to see much of her equally lovely body or any kinky sex. This film could easily pass for PG-13. Vadim creates an early sixties French atmosphere as he recalls the jazz/beat scene from that era, but he does so in a superficial, almost euphemistic way. In the elaborate scenes at Katov's apartment and then at his estate, we are given a hint of the decadent indulgence of a certain class of French society in which privilege, jazz, heroin, pot and easy sex are the rule, but Vadim keeps it all off camera except for one scene in which a joint is passed around. Vadim's most famous film starring Brigitte Bardot is Et Dieu... cra la femme (And God Created Woman) (1956). This is not to be confused with Vadim's American version of the film from 1988 starring Rebecca De Mornay, which was not very good. Bardot retired fairly young and devoted her life to helping animals. |
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