This paper analyzes mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a previously neglected channel of industrial restructuring in the face of trade liberalization. Using the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 as a natural experiment, I show that trade liberalization leads to a significant...

In this paper we discuss some of the most important economic issues raised in European Commission vs. Microsoft (2004) concerning the market for work group servers. In our view, the most important economic issues relate to (a) foreclosure incentives and (b) innovation effects of the proposed...

We study the repeal of a regulation that imposed maximum wholesale and retail markups for all but five fresh fruits and vegetables. We compare the prices of products affected by regulation before and after the policy change and use the unregulated products as a control group. We find that...

Scrutiny of potential mergers by the European Commission often focuses on unilateral effects or single firm dominance. But some cases have involved concerns over coordinated effects: the concern that the merger could increase the likelihood of consumer harm through tacit collusion by the reduced...

This paper contains an empirical analysis demand for “work-group” (or low-end) servers. Servers are at the centre of many US and EU anti-trust debates, including the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger and investigations into the activities of Microsoft. One question in these policy decisions is...

In this paper we investigate the evolution of quality adjusted prices for servers motivated by two facts. First, the productivity acceleration in the US economy since the mid 1990s is closely linked to spread of information technology of which networked computing is a large component. Second,...

Financial contagion is modeled as an equilibrium phenomenon in a dynamic setting with incomplete information and multiple banks. The equilibrium probability of bank failure is uniquely determined. We explore how the cross holding of deposits motivated by imperfectly correlated regional liquidity...

Conservation areas (CAs) are among the most restrictive English planning policies. Designation implies a significant limitation of owners’ control over the shape and appearance of their properties. The policy, however, can also be argued to solve a sort of ‘prisoners’ dilemma’, in which...

We model differences among agents in their ability to recognise temporal patterns of prices. Using the concept of DeBruijin sequences in two dynamic models of markets, we demonstrate the existence of equilibria in which prices fluctuate in a pattern that is independent of the fundamentals and...