I use a new Call Reports data item to revisit the role of advertising in US commercial banking. I examine how banks' advertising varies with the deposit market structure and whether bank profitability is influenced by advertising. My analysis addresses the endogeneity of market structure and...

We analyse the interaction of asymmetric industries in international vertically related markets. Each downstream firm bargains efficiently with its domestic supplier in a first stage and with the foreign supplier in a second stage. The asymmetry in upstream costs leads to inter-industry trade....

Foreign direct investment projects can generate spillovers through backward linkages in the host economy. This will be the case if local competitors in the project's own industry can benefit from the upstream efficiency improvements that were induced by the foreign firm. We provide...

In a repeated game setting of a vertically related industry, we study the collusive effects of vertical mergers. We show that any vertical merger facilitates upstream collusion, no matter how large (in terms of capacity or size of product portfolio) the integrated downstream buyer. But a...

The Spanish electricity spot market is highly concentrated both on the seller and the buyer side. Furthermore, unlike electricity spot markets in other deregulated electricity systems, large buyers and sellers are typically vertically integrated. This allows both large net sellers and large net...

We construct a model where the equilibrium organization of firms changes as an economy approaches the world technology frontier. In vertically integrated firms, owners (managers) have to spend time both on production and innovation activities, and this creates managerial overload, and...