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 consider a market served by a safe and a risky seller. While the expensive safe seller can solve the problems of all consumers, the cheap risky seller can help a consumer only with a certain probability. The risky seller's success probabilities are distributed across consumers and by the...

In modern economies, the amount of profits distributed to shareholders is far from being negligible. We show that the way profits are distributed among agents matters for the space-economy. For example, the existence of mobile rentiers is sufficient to make the symmetric configuration unstable...

We develop a novel approach to the dynamics of business strategy that is grounded in an explicit treatment of consumer choice when technologies improve over time. We address the evolution of market boundaries, resource rents and competitive positions by adapting models of competition with...

Using two standard location models, we investigate price competition and divergence from optimal product differentiation when consumer preferences are influenced by the number of consumers purchasing the same brand or shopping at the same store. Negative network effects tend to lessen...

This paper analyses the consequences for the standard import allocation models of assuming monopolistic competition on the supply side. Together with relative prices, this requires additional variables to capture product differentiation effects. To this end, we derive a composite price index...

This paper examines if international trade can reduce total welfare in an international oligopoly with differentiated goods. We show that welfare is a U-shaped function in the transport cost as long as trade occurs in equilibrium. With a Cournot duopoly trade can reduce welfare compared to...

In this paper we investigate the firm-specific factors that account for the decision to invest in low-wage countries on the part of Italian firms in the textiles and clothing sector. This analysis is motivated by the fact that our survey data show, between 1990 and 1997, a decline of average...

Using a new and extensive micro data set we investigate the impact of a change in international competitive pressure following a real exchange shock on multi-product firms’ product mix. We only find weak evidence for the core competencies hypothesis, according to which, we would expect the...

We develop a theory of imperfect competition with loss-averse consumers. All consumers are fully informed about match value and price at the time they make their purchasing decision. However, a share of consumers are initially uncertain about their tastes and form a reference point consisting of...