The interpretation of the loss of utility as transport costs in address models of differentiation poses a methodological difficulty. Transport costs implicitly amounts to assume that there is a good neither included in the differentiated sector nor in the composite (numeraire) good of the...

The goal of this paper is to reexamine the optimal design and efficiency of loyalty rewards in markets for final consumption goods. While the literature has emphasized the role of loyalty rewards as endogenous switching costs (which distort the efficient allocation of consumers), in this paper l...

The paper offers an overview of the literature on bundling in the telecommunications sector and its application in the Spanish market. We argue that the use of bundling in the provision of services is associated to technological reasons. Therefore, there appears no need to regulate bundling...

The goal of this paper is to study the role of multi-product firms in the market provision of product variety. The analysis is conducted using the spokes model of non-localized competition proposed by Chen and Riordan (2007). Firstly, we show that multi-product firms are at a competitive...

While the theoretical industrial organization literature has long argued that excess capacity can be used to deter entry into markets, there is little empirical evidence that incumbent firms effectively behave in this way. Bagwell and Ramey (1996) propose a game with a specific sequence of moves...

This paper examines the frequency of new product introductions in monopoly markets where demand is subject to temporary satiation. Consumers' taste for diversity is satisfied over time as new varieties are introduced to the market. If two varieties are introduced in consecutive periods then they...

Regulations that constrain firms’ externalities in one dimension can distort incentives and worsen externalities in other dimensions. In Peru’s industrial fishing sector, the world’s largest, fishing boats catch anchovy that plants along the coast convert into fishmeal. Matching...