There is a substantial theoretical literature on the potential effects of loyalty contracts, but a relative paucity of empirical work. This Paper employs the event study methodology to examine the effect of exclusionary contracts on firm performance in the ocean shipping industry. Shipping...

Switching costs and network effects bind customers to vendors if products are incompatible, locking customers or even markets in to early choices. Lock-in hinders customers from changing suppliers in response to (predictable or unpredictable) changes in efficiency, and gives vendors lucrative ex...

We generalize von der Fehr and Harbord's (1993) multi-unit auction model for the case of a deterministic demand allowing for any technology mix and elastic demand in order to account for demand side bidding. We obtain a general characterization of the equilibrium and show that the Cournot model...

This is a preliminary draft of an Invited Symposium paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society to be held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and 'standard' economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can...

The aim of this Paper is to evaluate simultaneously market power and the incentives faced by carriers to improve efficiency, taking into account the regulatory changes that have affected the European airline industry. We construct and estimate a model that includes demand, capacity, and cost...

We compare the most common methods for selling a company or other asset when participation is costly: a simple simultaneous auction, and a sequential process in which potential buyers decide in turn whether or not to enter the bidding. The sequential process is always more efficient. But...

We compare the two most common bidding processes for selling a company or other asset when participation is costly to buyers. In an auction all entry decisions are made prior to any bidding. In a sequential bidding process earlier entrants can make bids before later entrants choose whether to...

This paper surveys recent work on competition in markets in which consumers face costs to switching between competing firms' products, even when all firms' products are functionally identical. I address issues in macroeconomics, international trade and industrial organization: In a market with...

We study the relationship between competition and quality within a spatial competition framework where firms compete in prices and quality. We generalise existing literature on spatial price-quality competition along several dimensions, including utility functions that are non-linear in income...