This paper studies unshrouding decisions in a framework similar to Gabaix and Laibson (2006), but considers an alternative unshrouding mechanism where the impact of advertising add-on information depends on the number of unshrouding firms. We show that shrouding becomes less prevalent as the...

In many markets supply contracts include a series of small, regular payments made by consumers and a single, large bonus that consumers receive at some point during the contractual period. But, if for instance its production costs exceed its value to consumers, such a bonus creates...

We develop a model for two-sided markets with consumers and producers, who interact through a platform. Typical settings for the model are the market for smartphones with phone users, app producers, and smartphone operating systems; or the video game market with game players, video game...

Many countries with national health care providers and health insurances regulate the market for pharmaceuticals to steer drug demand and to control expenses. For example, they introduce reference pricing or tiered co-payments to enhance drug substitution and competition. Since 2006, Germany...

We show that the rise in ebook prices following Apple's entry into the market can be explained by Amazon's Kindle device losing its essential position. When consumers began accessing Amazon's ebooks using third-party devices, such as the iPad, Amazon's incentive to keep ebook prices low...

When Apple entered the ebook market, prices rose. A recent court decision found Apple guilty of colluding with publishers, blaming the price hike, in part, on agency agreements and prohibiting their use. Building a model to compare these with traditional wholesale agreements, we identify a...

This paper studies the relationship between retail gasoline pricing strategies and potential demand. Utilising detailed data on traffic on the German Autobahn and the special case of Bundesautobahntankstellen, the interaction between demand and price competition is studied, as are the changes in...

We analyze the best price clauses (BPCs) of online travel agents (OTAs) using meta-search price data of nearly 30,000 hotels in different countries. We find that BPCs influence the pricing and availability of hotel rooms across online sales channels. In particular, hotels publish their offers...

We investigate whether online travel agents (OTAs) assign hotels worse positions in their search results if these set lower hotel prices at other OTAs or on their own websites. We formally characterize how an OTA can use such a strategy to reduce price differentiation across distribution...

This paper is motivated by the US freight railroad industry, which is characterized by a major restructuring over the last 30 years. In particular, the number of active firms decreased from 26 in 1978 to seven in 2006 due to several takeover waves. The empirical focus concerns the estimation of...