This paper shows that market concentration is positively related to outsourcing activities in a framework of Cournot competition with strategic outsourcing in a first stage. The theoretical priors are confirmed by rank correlation coefficients between the intermediate goods import intensity and...

We study welfare effects of horizontal mergers under a successive oligopoly model and find that downstream mergers can increase welfare if they reduce input prices. The lower input price shifts some input production from cost- inefficient upstream firms to cost-efficient ones. Also, the lower...

Conjectural variation models are popular in empirical research as they infer the degree of market power from real data. IO-theorists, however disapprove it for lack of theoretical foundation arguing that dynamic reactions are forced into a static model with the strategy space and time horizon...

We customize the aggregative game approach to oligopoly to study asymmetric media markets. Advertiser, platform, and consumer surplus are tied together by a simple summary statistic. When media are ad-financed and ads are a nuisance to consumers we establish see-saws between consumers and...

The paper investigates the determinants of banking profitability and banking market conditions in Austria. We conduct a panel econometric analysis which allows for testing the hypotheses which have become the most prominent in the literature on bank profitability: the...

The great majority of Austrian banks operate on a regional or local basis and only a few banks provide their services on a national or even international scale. Obviously, the market environments regional or local banks face are different from that of nationwide operating banks. Casual evidence...