This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119013000594"><I>Journal of Urban Economics</I></A>, 2014, 13-27.<P> This paper analyzes efficient pricing at a congested airport dominated by a single firm. Unlike much of the previous literature, we combine a dynamic (bottleneck) model of congestion and a vertical...</p></i></a>

The potential relationship between domestic environmental regulation and internationalcompetitiveness has evoked various speculations. The common neoclassical train of thought is thatstrict environmental regulation is detrimental to the competitiveness of industry, and that itinduces phenomena...

We empirically investigate the responsiveness of international trade to the stringency of environmental regulation. Stringent environmental regulation may impair the export competitiveness of ‘dirty’ domestic industries, and as a result, ‘pollution havens’ emerge in countries where...

Institutional barriers to entry were removed to a considerable extent in 1996 in the Dutch retail sector. Three years before that the regulator decided to not take legal actions anymore against entrants violating institutional requirements. In the current analysis we investigate the effects of...

This paper develops an economic argument relating auctions to high marketprices. At the core of the argument is the claim that market competition andbidding in an auction should be analyzed as part of one game, where the pricingstrategies in the market subgame depend on the bidding strategies...

We assess the influence of competition and capital regulation on the stability of the banking system. We particularly ask two questions: i) how does capital regulation affect (endogenous) entry; and ii) how do (exogenous) changes in the competitive environment affect bank monitoring choices and...

In a circular city model, I consider network design and pricing decisions for asingle fast transport connection that faces competition from a slower but betteraccessible transport mode. To access the fast transport network individuals haveto make complementary trips by slow mode. This fact has...

We develop a method to screen for local cartels. We first test whether there is statistical evidence of clustering of outlets that score high on some characteristic that is consistent with collusive behavior. If so, we determine in a second step the most suspicious regions where further...

We study mergers in a market where N firms sell a homogeneous good and consumers search sequentially to discover prices. The main motivation for such an analysis is that mergers generally affect market prices and thereby, in a search environment, the search behavior of consumers. Endogenous...

This paper studies the incentives to merge in a Bertrand competition model where firms sell differentiatedproducts and consumers search for satisfactory deals. In the pre-merger symmetricequilibrium, the probability that a firm is the next one to be visited by a consumer is equal acrossfirms not...