Human actions are often guided both by individual rationality and by social norms. In this paper we explore how duopoly market competition values the variants of a product, when these variants embody at different levels the requirements derived from some social norm. In a model where preferences...

This paper analyses price competition between two firms producing horizontally and vertically differentiated goods. These are assumed to be credence goods, as consumers can hardly ascertain the quality of the commodities. We provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a unique price...

Within the framework proposed by Mussa and Rosen (1978) for modelling quality differentiation, we allow consumers to buy simultaneously different variants of the same indivisible good. We call this the "joint purchase option". We show that this option dramatically affects price competition:...

This paper first introduces an approach relying on market games to examine how successive oligopolies do operate between downstream and upstream markets. This approach is then compared with the traditional analysis of oligopolistic interaction in successive markets. The market outcomes resulting...

We study the introduction of new products in a vertically differentiated industry. Innovative firms have to engage into reducing time-to-market investments in order to shorten the time interval between innovation and sales. Still, these investments generate irreversible costs which have to be...

Media industries are important drivers of popular culture. A large fraction of leisure time is devoted to radio, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and television (the illustrative example henceforth). Most advertising expenditures are incurred for these media. They are also mainly supported...