This discussion paper led to an article in <I>Games and Economic Behavior</I> (2012), pp. 120-138.<P> We consider an oligopolistic market where firms compete in price and quality and where consumers are heterogeneous in knowledge: some consumers know both the prices and quality of the products offered,...</p></i>

Firms signal high quality through high prices even if the market structure is highly competitive and price competition is severe. In a symmetric Bertrand oligopoly where products may differ only in their quality, production cost is increasing in quality and the quality of each firm’s product...

In this paper we investigate whether markets with heterogeneous network externalities can belocked-in by old technologies even if superior technologies are available. Heterogeneous networkexternalities are present when some consumers care more about the size of the market share of agood than...

This paper analyzes the impact of globalization on the allocation of public and private resources for research, knowledge creation and diffusion. We argue that while the concentration of research investments remains in a relatively small number of rich countries and regions, the focus of such...

The paper analyses the contribution of 'golden papers' - seminal works whose ideas remain as fresh and relevant today as when they were first published decades ago - and which continue to dominate academic discourse among successive generations of scholars. The authors analyse why two works...

This paper addresses some of the challenges confronting the European Union and China as they build their knowledge economies, and their on-going and possible future actions to address such challenges. Fifty years after the creation of what became the European Union, we argue that there is an...