The uniform pricing puzzle for vertically differentiated products states that a monopolist sells high and low quality products at the same price despite the fact that quality is perfectly observable and that there are no significant costs of adjusting prices. The puzzle is relevant for movies,...

We utilize a unique database from a large legal services provider to examine how service quality responds to the firm's available capacity and workload, and to the nature of the firm-client relationship. We develop empirical measures of both the (internal) level of resources available to the...

This paper examines how the distribution of prices and consumer welfare change with the number of competitors in a model where consumers di¤er in the amount of price information they have. We only assume that an increase in the number of competitors results in an increase in the probability...

When will a monopolist have incentives to foreclose a complementary market by degrading compatibility/interoperability of his products with those of rivals? We develop a framework where leveraging extracts more rents from the monopoly market by 'restoring' second degree price discrimination. In...

Ranking have become increasingly popular on markets for study programs, restaurants, wines, cars, etc. This paper analyses the welfare implication of such rankings. Consumers have to make a choice between two goods of unknown quality with exogenous presence or absence of an informative ranking....

We study competition between nonprofit providers supplying a collective service through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. When providers adopt a not-for-profit mission, the absence of a residual claimant can impede entry, pro- tecting the position of an inefficient incumbent. Moreover,...

Business services firms are increasingly under pressure from foreign competition. We develop an oligopolistic competition model that studies the effect of trade liberalization on exit and sectoral restructuring in the business services sector. We assume that firms are heterogeneous in their...

Frequently, aspiring entrants have only limited information about their potential rivals’ entry decisions. As a result, the outcome of the entry game may be that more firms enter than the market can sustain; or, at least, that unnecessary entry investments are made. We refer to these outcomes...

This paper examines how the introduction of a direct trade alternative for buyers and sellers affects competition among middlemen. Direct trade makes middlemen’s supply and demand functions depend on both bid and ask prices, a feature we term interdependence. A simple model is used to...

The paper provides policymakers and regulators with an overview of the more relevant theoretical issues related to the pricing of access to ensure that the political debate around practical concerns is solidly grounded. The paper discusses in detail the importance of access pricing in the...