Since Hotelling's (1929) seminal work, economists have tried to understand how product differentiation affects price competition. I study the product location decisions, on a vertical characteristic space, of two sets of horizontal competitors when the inputs supplied by the "upstream" set (the...

This dissertation explores the role of efficiency of redistributive institutions (ERI)on redistribution. The first substantive essay proposes a theoretical model to explain thelack of strong empirical evidence in favor of a positive relationship between incomeinequality and redistribution. This...