What is Switzerland’s position today with regard to the acceptance, diffusion and usage of new work forms and business methods in the economy and society? One of the most extensive international surveys of population and businesses done thus far gives well founded answers to these questions:...

We investigate the incentive for partial vertical integration, namely, partial ownership agreements between manufacturers and retailers, when the retailers are privately informed about their production costs and engage in differentiated good price competition. Partial vertical integration...

In the framework Hotelling-Downs competition two players can freely choose a position along a one-dimensional market. We introduce restrictions of feasible strategies and analyze the consequences for players and consumers. In equilibrium players may minimally differentiate away from the center...

Random Utitly Models (RUMs) are a particularly convenient way of modelling product differentiation. In this paper we demonstrate that they can be used to examine the possibilities of creating quality measures from data on prices and sales volumes. We formulate conditions sufficient for the...

We formulate a family of direct utility functions for the consumption of a differentiated good. This is used to generate a family of demand systems with flexible substitution patterns. Demand models for market shares can be estimated by regression enabling the use of instrumental variables....

We study product differentiation on a Salop circle when firms relocate incrementally due to bounded rationality. We prove that, under common assumptions on demand, firms relocate only when two or more firms target the same niche. In any other case, there is no incentive for any firm to relocate...

This paper studies the innovation strategies of multi-product firms in industries with different scope for product differentiation. In a simple model of multi-product firms, we show that returns to product versus process innovation are industry-specific. Demand and cost linkages induce a natural...

In this paper, I investigate welfare gains associated with trade induced intra-firm adjustments of multi-product firms. To disentangle the welfare gains, I split up the R&D portfolio of a multi-product firm into three different channels: i) product innovation, ii) investments in the degree of...

This paper studies the incentives for multiproduct duopolists to sell their products as a bundle. It is shown that contrary to the monopoly case bundling may reduce profits and increase consumer rent. This is the case if consumers' reservation values are negatively correlated. The reason is that...

This paper presents a model of oligopolistic competition under horizontal differentiation of products and a triangular distribution of consumers. The triangular distribution aims to represent a case of concentration of consumers around the central location. The main result is that a good deal of...