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...

This paper analyses the impact of common ownership on markups and innovation and adds to the discussion of the recently observed patterns of a long term rise in market power. We shed light on the inconclusiveness of results regarding the effects of common ownership on markups in the existing...

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...

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 study the effect of stronger patent protection on innovation activities of firms and firm-product level markups. Relying on cross-industry differences in the use of patents, we exploit firm-level variation in exposure to India's patent reform. For firms more exposed to stronger patent...

In this paper, we summarize the economic literature on non-price effects of mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Specifically, we discuss the effects of M&As on innovation, product variety, and sustainability. Although the relationship is theoretically ambiguous, the vast majority of ex-post...

We explore whether lawful cooperation in buyer groups facilitates collusion in the product market. Buyer groups purchase inputs more economically. In a repeated game, abandoning the buyer group altogether or excluding single firms constitute credible threats. Hence, in theory, buyer groups...

Factors facilitating collusion may not successfully predict cartel occurrence: when a factor predicts that collusion (explicit and tacit) becomes easier, firms might be less inclined to set up a cartel simply because tacit coordination already tends to go in hand with supra-competitive profits....