Earlier work characterized pricing with switching costs as a dilemma between a short-term 'harvesting' incentive to increase prices versus a long-term 'investing' incentive to decrease prices. This paper shows that small switching costs may reduce firm profits and provide short-term incentives...

We analyze the welfare effects of mergers in a strategic trade-policy environment. A merger in one country changes the strategic behavior of all firms in the markets, which in turn modifies the strategic interaction between governments in the policy game. Consequently, the results strongly...

This paper surveys recent work on competition in markets in which consumers face costs to switching between competing firms' products, even when all firms' products are functionally identical. I address issues in macroeconomics, international trade and industrial organization: In a market with...

We analyze competition in product lines by multi-product oligopolists that have preferential access to a local market but can supply a rival's market by incurring distance costs. We show that the width and degree of overlap in the product lines is greater in large markets and when the products...

We show that relaxing the assumption of CES preferences in monopolistic competition has surprising implications when trade is restricted. Integrated and segmented markets behave differently, the latter typically exhibiting reciprocal dumping. Globalization and lower trade costs have different...