This paper analyses the sources of buyer power and its effect on sellers’ investment in quality improvements. In our model retailers make take-it-or-leave-it offers to a producer and each of them obtains its marginal contribution to total profits (gross of sunk costs). In turn, this depends on...

This paper examines the impact of regulatory intervention to cut termination rates of calls from fixed lines to mobile phones. Under quite general conditions of competition, theory suggests that lower termination charges will result in higher prices for mobile subscribers, a phenomenon known as...

How many cartels are there? The answer is important in assessing the efficiency of competition policy. We present a Hidden Markov Model that answers the question, taking into account that often we do not know whether a cartel exists in an industry or not. Our model identifies key policy...

Local merchant guilds were ubiquitous in medieval Europe, and their development was inextricably linked with the development of towns and the rise of the merchant class. We develop a theory of the emergence of local merchant guilds as an efficient mechanism to implement collusion among merchants...

We examine antitrust rules in a two-county general equilibrium trade model, contrasting national and multilateral (cooperative) determination of competition policy, exploring the properties of the policy equilibrium. It is not imperfect competition, but variation in competitive stance between...

The purpose of this paper is to try to shed some new light on the current industrial policy crisis. This paper proposes that the industrial policy debate is shaped by knowledge about the functioning of the underlying industrial structure, which in turn is the Gegenstand of scholars in the field...

For a variety of reasons, it is likely that the market definition approach will remain an important tool in competition policy analysis for some time, despite the increased importance of other tools such as the simulation approach. Against the background of the new block exemption regulation for...