Domestic products have a disproportionately high market share on many goods markets. We examine the contribution of preferences to such "home bias", using detailed data on wine sales in New Hampshire (weekly sales by brand by store for one year). In counterfactual simulations, where we use the...

Two-way trade in (almost) homogenous products has ambiguous welfare effects if entry is restricted. We examine Swedish imports of bottled water to investigate whether transport cost losses from trade outweigh the partial equilibrium gains from trade (stronger competition and more brands to...

This paper considers buyer power in the presence of upstream competition to supply a homogeneous product. A likely consequence of upstream competition is that each supplier is uncertain of its final output, because it does not know how many downstream buyers will select it as a seller. We...

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest, by competition agencies, in assessing the competitive effects of partial acquisitions. We propose an empirical structural methodology to examine quantitatively the unilateral impact of partial acquisitions involving pure financial interests...

The growth of private-equity investment strategies in which firms often hold partial ownership interests in competing firms has led competition agencies to take an increased interest in assessing the competitive effects of partial horizontal acquisitions. We propose a methodology to evaluate the...

We analyse the major economic issues raised by the 1997 Tobacco Resolution and the ensuing proposed legislation that were intended to settle tobacco litigation in the United States. By settling litigation largely in return for tax increases, the Resolution was a superb example of a "win-win"...

Unilateral second-best carbon taxes are analysed in a two-period, two-country model with international trade in final goods, oil and bonds. Acceleration of global warming resulting from a future carbon tax is large if the price elasticities of oil demand are large and that of oil supply is...

The present study provides estimates of the Effective Marginal Tax Rates (EMTRs) for a sample of 17 OECD countries and 11 manufacturing sectors in a single framework encompassing capital, labour and energy taxes. Our cross-country/cross-sector approach allows us comparing the incentives provided...

This paper examines how firms interact with their rivals. The main novelty of our approach is that we let conjectural variations depend on the actual ability of other firms to react, which we measure by both the physical capacity and financial status of firms. Our main findings are threefold....

We consider a vertically related industry and analyze how the total harm due to a price increase upstream is distributed over downstream firms and final consumers. For this purpose, we develop a general model without making specific assumptions regarding demand, costs, or the mode of...