This paper develops a theory of patent portfolios in which firms accumulate an enormous amount of related patents in diverse technology fields such that it becomes impractical to develop a new product that with certainty does not inadvertently infringe on other firms’ patent portfolios. We...

We consider a simple two period model where consumers have different switching costs. Before the market opens, there was an incumbent who sold to all consumers. We identify the equilibrium both with Stackelberg and Bertrand competition and show how the presence of low switching cost consumers...

Since gasoline has a relatively inelastic demand, raising government revenue via gasoline taxes could appear appropriate as it entails a relatively small deadweight loss. However, gasoline retail is generally a highly concentrated market, hence the assumption of perfect competition when...

In a spatial competition setting there is usually a non-negative relationship between competition and quality. In this paper we offer a novel mechanism whereby competition leads to lower quality. This mechanism relies on two key assumptions, namely that the providers are motivated and...

We study price formation in the standard model of consumer search for differentiated products but allow for search cost heterogeneity. In doing so, we dispense with the usual assumption that all consumers search at least once in equilibrium. This allows us to analyze the manner in which prices...

This study investigates the impact of firm-specific discount factors on merger formation and market performance. We estimate firm-specific discount factors for 228 publicly traded and privately held firms operating in the semiconductor market and apply a heterogeneous treatment effects model...

This paper analyzes market segmentation in a two-sided market that consists of media consumers and advertisers. The analysis is motivated by a European Court of Justice Decision in October 2011, which allowed viewers to take advantage of international price differences and buy access to Premier...

We show that the presence of a strategic tax policy increases the incentive for a horizontal merger compared to the situation with no tax policy. Thus, we point towards a new factor, viz., strategic tax policy, for increasing the incentive for a horizontal merger that has been ignored in the...

We show the effects of the bargaining power of labour unions on product innovation under decentralised and centralised wage bargaining. In this context, we show the implications of preference function, which affects the market size. A higher union bargaining power increases innovation if...

We investigate private and social incentives for standardization to ensure market-wide system compatibility in a two-dimensional spatial competition model. We develop a new methodology to analyze competition on a torus and show that there is a fundamental conflict of interest between consumers...