Merged firms are typically rather complex organizations. Accordingly, merger has a more profound effect on the structure of a market than simply reducing the number of competitors. We show that this may render horizontal mergers profitable and welfare-improving even if costs are linear. The...

Multi-product exporters choose their product mix focusing on their best-performing products. Although their product mix varies across countries (the fickle fringe), the interdependence in demand or production technology making vectors of products systematically co-exported leads to commonalities...

The paper shows that taking inventory control out of the hands of competitive or exclusive retailers and assigning it to a manufacturer increases the value of a supply chain especially for goods whose demand is highly volatile. This is because doing so solves incentive distortions that arise...

This paper explores why competing firms can choose to outsource to an external common supplier that does not have a cost advantage in input production. The supplier, through its contract offers, manages to generate asymmetry, to alter product market competition, and to extract profits from the...

We present a general and tractable oligopoly model of multi-sided platforms with endogenous side and platform choices of heterogeneous end-users, considering any mix of single-homing and multi-homing platforms and in which participating on one side could preclude doing so on others. We show the...

We examine the incentives and implications of supplier encroachment, when final good produc-tion requires the use of multiple complementary inputs and the entry of a supplier into the final good market gives rise to mutual outsourcing of inputs between the encroaching supplier and the incumbent....

We study the role of firm heterogeneity and imperfect competition for global production networks and the gains from trade. We develop a quantifiable trade model with two-sided firm heterogeneity, matching frictions, and oligopolistic competition upstream. More productive buyers endogenously...

Using six years of firm-level data covering 224 regions of the enlarged European Union, we evaluate the importance to a firm of locating its activities (production, headquarters, R&D, logistics and sales) close together. We find that, after controlling for regional characteristics, being closely...

We investigate the link between productivity of firms and their sourcing behavior. Following Antràs & Helpman (2004) we distinguish between domestic and foreign sourcing, as well as between outsourcing and vertical integration. A firm's choice is driven by a hold-up problem caused by lack of...

In this paper we compare the profitability of a merger to the profitability of a partial ownership arrangement and find that partial ownership arrangements can be more profitable for the acquiring and acquired firm because they can result in a greater dampening of competition. We also derive...