This paper develops a monopolistic competition model to study the characteristics of products, such as quality improvement and product diversity (function-specialization and individualization), and the division of labor in production. Different from the ordinary economic model, our utility...

We derive a measure of firm speed of price adjustment that is directly inversely related to market power and compare this to the measure derived by Martin (1993). However, both measures are incorrect when firms have price conjectural variations. This is because Taylor expansions of the demand...

The analysis of economies of specialization at the individual level by Yang & Shi (1992) and Yang & Ng (1993) is combined with the Dixit & Stiglitz (1977) analysis of monopolistic-competitive firms to show that, ignoring administrative costs and indirect effects (such as rent-seeking), even if...

Mezzeti and Dinopoulos (1991) show that a free trade agreement (trade liberalization) decreases wage rate. However, Naylor (1998) shows that trade liberalization increases wage rate. Both papers consider tariff as exogenously given. In this paper we show that these conflicting results can be...

This paper examines empirically the players’ intrabrand vertical price control, interbrand horizontal pricing coordination, and their learning process to equilibrium in a rare natural experiment of supergame where a well defined simultaneous-move price setting stage game is repeated every...

This paper uses household-level data of cellular usage to provide estimates of the implied switching costs that preclude consumers from switching providers in the face of competing offers. Our estimation differs from previous switching costs studies in that we are able to observe individual...

This paper reports a laboratory experiment to study pricing and advertising behavior in a market with costly buyer search. Sellers simultaneously post prices and decide whether or not to incur an exogenous cost to advertise their price. Sellers are not capacity constrained, and each buyer...

Received literature have shown that if competing networks are restricted to linear and uniform pricing, high access charges can facilitate collusion; a result that breaks down if we allow for non-linear and discriminatory pricing, however. We show that by adding unbalanced calling pattern to the...

This paper first inverts a general class of matrices for solving Bertrand equilibria from arbitrary coalition structures in linear Bertand oligopolies. It then studies merger incentives and obtains two main results; 1) for any asymmetric costs, mergers of any size are profitable; 2) a merger will...

We introduce capacity constrained competition between market-making intermediaries in a model in which agents can choose between trading with intermediaries, joining a search market or remaining inactive. Recently, market-making by a monopolistic intermediary has been analyzed by Rust and Hall...