We study effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) in a mar- ket with two pharmaceutical firms providing horizontally dierentiated (branded) drugs. Patients varying in their susceptability to medication are a prioriuninformed of available medication. Physicians making the prescription...

In this paper we estimate hospital costs and evaluate economies of scale and scope using a generalised multiproduct cost function and a sample of English NHS trusts with different types of ownership, namely Foundation Trusts and non Foundation Trusts. Evaluating the behaviour of different types...

We study decision making processes with non-standard all-pay structures. In our first group of applications, individual members of some institution—due to public pressure or expectation—propose reductions of their own income, e.g., corporate board members reducing their bonus payments in an...

We study the role of information exchange, leadership and coordination in team or partnership structures. For this purpose, we view individuals jointly engaging in productive processes -- a 'team' -- as endowed with individual and privately held information on the joint production process. Once...

We develop the idea of using mean-variance preferences for the analysis of the first-price, all-pay auction. On the bidding side, we characterise the optimal strategy in symmetric allpay auctions under mean-variance preferences for general distributions of valuations and any number of bidders....

We study redistributive agreements designed collectively by individual and independent states for the joint supply of a public good. We specifically model the case of international environmental agreements but our analysis should be equally applicable to other multinational arrangements with...

We analyse a procurement auction in which sellers are distinguished on the basis of the ratios of quality per unit of money they offer. Sellers are privately informed on the quality of the technology or good they offer. We assume that the procurer cannot perfectly identify the best offer. Thus,...

We investigate how different types of merger affect input prices, research levels and equilibrium profits in vertical market structures when there is research activity in the upstream market that spills over to the downstream retailers. To do so, we develop a very simple model where three...

We investigate how a downstream merger affects input prices and equilibrium profits when there are price interdependencies among firms. To do so, we develop a very simple model where different inputs, provided by monopolist suppliers, may be combined to produce differentiated products sold by...

While a growing literature examining the relationship between income and health expenditures suggests that health care is a luxury good, this conclusion is contentiously debated due to heterogeneity of the existing results. This paper tests the luxury good hypothesis (namely that income...