We study the competitive effects of restricting direct access to secondary care by gatekeeping, focusing on the informational role of gatekeeping general practitioners (GPs). We consider a secondary care market with two hospitals choosing the quality and specialisation of their care. GPs...

In a model of spatial competition, we analyse the equilibrium outcomes in markets where the product price is exogenous. Using an extended version of the Hotelling model, we assume that firms choose their locations and the quality of the product they supply. We derive the optimal price set by a...

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

We consider a therapeutic market with potentially three pharmaceutical firms. Two of the firms offer horizontally differentiated brand-name drugs. One of the brand-name drugs is a new treatment under patent protection that will be introduced, if the profits are sufficient to cover the entry...

We analyse how a patent-holding (incumbent) firm may strategically use advertising ex ante to a¤ect the R&D investments in new (di¤eren- tiated) products, and thus the ex post market structure in the industry. We derive exact conditions for advertising and R&D being substitute strategies for...