In this paper, we provide a general model discussing the impact of non-homothetic preferences on the vertical comparative advantage of countries, i.e. the existence of demand-based determinants of the quality content of production and exports. We show that while average income positively impacts...

There is a wide consensus among international institutions and national governments in favor of compact (i.e. densely populated) cities as a way to improve the ecological performance of the transport system. Indeed, when both the intercity and intra-urban distributions of activities are given, a...

We revisit and extend previous theoretical work on internationalization decisions by firms which are imperfectly informed on the state of the demand in the market into which they are planning to export or enter through foreign direct investment (FDI). The latter is a costly strategy mitigating...

When the production of high quality needs the employment of qualified labour, firms' decisions concerning quality are affected by the extent to which skills are abundant. By means of a comparison between monopoly and perfect competition, we show how market power in such a context may entail a...

In this paper we consider a model of oligopolistic competition where firms make a two-dimensional product line decision. They choose a location in style space, thus, inducing horizontal differentiation, and produce different qualities (a product line) of a given good (vertical differentiation),...

We analyse the problem of a non-producing patentee who licenses an essential process innovation to a vertical Cournot oligopoly. The vertical oligopoly is composed of an upstream and a downstream sector which may differ in their efficiency or, in other words, in the benefit they derive from the...

In this paper, we extend the concept of stability to vertical collusive agreements, involving downstream and upstream firms, using a setup of successive Cournot oligopolies. We show that a stable vertical agreement always exists: the unanimous vertical agreement involving all downstream and...

The mininal core of strategic decisions a firm has to make is three-fold: What to produce? At which scale? At what price? A full-fledged theory of oligopolistic competition should be able to embrace these three dimensions jointly. Starting from the Cournot-Bertrand dispute and the stream of...

We develop a model of monopolistic competition that accounts for consumers' heterogeneity in both incomes and preferences. This model makes it possible to study the implications of income redistribution on the toughness of competition. We show how the market outcome depends on the joint...

This paper studies equilibrium merging behavior in composite good industries. Component producers face the option to either merge with a similar component producer (horizontal merger) or a complementary one (complementary merger) of a composite good. Focusing only on strategic reasons,...