I review the state of the art of the academic theoretical and empirical literature on the potential trade-off between competition and stability in banking. There are two basic channels through which competition may increase instability: by exacerbating the coordination problem of...

The object of this paper is to discuss on-line intermediation from the perspective of two-sided markets. It builds a simple model of the intermediation activity when trading partners are involved in a commercial relationship and uses it to illustrate some of the results that emerge in the...

This paper analyzes the effects of net neutrality regulation on investment incentives for Internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs), and their implications for social welfare. We show that the ISP’s decision on the introduction of discrimination across content depends on a...

This paper studies optimal sport league size. League expansion lowers average player quality, reducing fans’ utility in inframarginal locations, while fan utility in new locations rises. Welfare analyses of such expansions must compare these two effects. Using a model where fan demand depends...

This paper analyzes patent pools and their effects on innovation incentives. It is shown that the pro-competitive effects of patent pools for complementary patents naturally extend for dynamic innovation incentives. However, this simple conclusion may not hold if we entertain the possibility...

We study how net neutrality regulations affect a high-bandwidth content provider’s (CP) investment incentives in quality of services (QoS). We find that the effects crucially depend on network capacity levels. With limited capacity, as in mobile networks, prioritized delivery services are...

We study contestability in non-profit markets when non-commercial providers supply a homogeneous collective good through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. Unlike in the case of for-profit competition, in the non-profit case the absence of price-based sales contracts means that fixed...

In the European Union, energy markets are increasingly being liberalized. A case in point is the European natural gas industry. The general expectation is that more competition will lead to lower prices and higher volumes, and hence higher welfare. This paper indicates that this might not happen...

This paper explores an equilibrium model for industry entry dynamics and technological change. We focus on the share valuation of firms in the transition as technology changes, and whether or not share prices are always increasing when technology improves. We find that there can be a U-shaped...