This paper examines the consequences of introducing mobile number portability (MNP). As MNP allows consumers to keep their telephone number when switching providers, it reduces consumers’ switching costs. However, MNP may also cause consumer ignorance if telephone numbers no longer identify...

This paper develops a simple reduced form model of two-way network competition with linear retail pricing. Using the techniques of supermodular games, it is demonstrated that the most important results from the existing literature do not depend on routinely invoked assumptions, such as specific...

Based upon time series data published by PTT prior to regulatory reform, this paper investigates whether Swiss telecommunications qualify as a natural monopoly. Employing the subadditivity concept for multiproduct industries, alternative specifications of quadratic cost functions are estimated....

We develop a network-flow approach for characterizing interim-allocation rules that can be implemented by ex post allocations. Our method can be used to characterize feasible interim allocations in general multi-unit auctions where agents face capacity constraints, both ceilings and floors....

Public agencies rely on two key modes to procure goods and services: auctions and direct negotiations. The relative advantages of these two modes are still imperfectly understood. This paper therefore studies public procurement of regional passenger railway services in Germany, where regional...

This paper analyzes how all-pay auctions with endogenous prizes can be used to provide effort incentives. We show that wide classes of effort distributions can be implemented as equilibrium outcomes of such games. We also ask how all-pay auctions have to be structured so as to induce high...

An auction is externality-robust if unilateral deviations from equilibrium leave the other bidders’ payoffs unaffected. The equilibrium and its outcome will then persist if certain types of externalities arise between bidders. One example are externalities due to spiteful preferences, which...

We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of equilibria with only two active players in the all-pay auction with complete information and identity-dependent externalities. This condition shows that the generic equilibrium of the standard all-pay auction is robust to the...

This paper analyzes two-stage rank-order tournaments. A principal decides (i) how to spread prize money across the two periods, (ii) how to weigh performance in the two periods when awarding the second-period prize, and (iii) whether to reveal performance after the … first period. The...

We develop a novel geometric approach to mechanism design using an important result in convex analysis: the duality between a closed convex set and its support function. By deriving the support function for the set of feasible interim values we extend the wellknown Maskin-Riley-Matthews-Border...