We analyze duopoly Bertrand competition under network effects. We consider both incompatible and compatible products. Our main result is that network effects create a fundamental conflict between the maximization of social welfare and consumer surplus whenever products are incompatible. While...

We analyze market dynamics under Bertrand duopoly competition in industries with network effects and consumer switching costs. Consumers form installed bases, repeatedly buy the products, and differ with respect to their switching costs. Depending on the ratio of switching costs to network...

We analyze the choices between two technologies A and B that both exhibit network effects. We introduce a critical mass game in which coordination on either one of the standards constitutes a Nash equilibrium outcome while coordination on standard B is assumed to be payoff-dominant. We present a...

In this paper we apply standard cartel theory to identify the major institutional stabilizers of Germany's area tariff system of collective bargaining between a single industry union and the industry's employers association. Our cartel analysis allows us to demonstrate that recent labor policy...

We analyze the bargaining problem of an incumbent firm and a union when the wage contract becomes generally binding. Our main application relates to competition among operators of mail delivery networks. We describe the Deutsche Post case which highlights the raising rivals' costs incentive and...

We present a model with firms selling (homogeneous) products in two imperfectly segmented markets (a "high-demand" and a "low-demand" market). Buyers are mobile but restricted by transportation costs, so that imperfect arbitrage occurs when prices differ in both markets. We show that equilibria...

Considering a vertical structure with perfectly competitive upstream firms that deliver a homogenous good to a differentiated retail duopoly, we show that upstream fixed costs may help to monopolize the downstream market. We find that downstream prices increase in upstream firms' fixed costs...

This paper presents a set of panel data to study the diffusion of retail checkout barcode scanning in ten European countries over the period 1981-1996. Estimates from a standard diffusion model suggest that countries differ most in the long-run diffusion level of barcode scanning and less in...

We challenge the view that the presence of powerful buyers stifles suppliers ́incentives to innovate. Following Katz (1987), we model buyer power as buyers ́ability to substitute away from a given supplier and isolate several effects that support the opposite view, namely that the presence of...