A new theory of loss-leader pricing is provided in which firms advertise low (below cost) prices for certain goods to signal that their other unadvertised (substitute) goods are not priced too high. The theory is applied to the pricing of upgrades. The results contrast with most existing...

This paper examines the effects of obtaining a strategic advantage of becoming the leader in the market on insiders’ incentives to merge and consumer welfare. We show that being the market leader is privately profitable for the merging insiders. We also show that the leading merger would...

It is usually believed that the presence of a labour union makes firms as well as consumers worse off by increasing wages compared to the situation with no labour union. We show that the presence of a labour union may increase the incentive for entry and may also make consumers better off...

This paper proposes a new empirical framework to measure banking competition. The method developed delivers a robust monotonic relationship between the measure and toughness of price competition. Furthermore, the proposed competition measure can be readily applied to other industries.

Bundled discounts by pairs of otherwise independent firms play an increasingly important role as a strategic tool in several industries. Given that prices of firms competing for the same consumers are strategic complements, one would expect their discounts levels also to be strategic...

We analyze the impact of passive partial ownership (PPO) on horizontal mergers. We show that antitrust authorities ignoring the effects of previous PPO acquisitions invite sneaky takeovers: a PPO is strategically used prior to a full takeover to get a merger approved which is in fact detrimental...

We analyze price competition between two brands. Buyers consist of switchers and two segments of customers with limited brand loyalty. We identify a unique symmetric mixed-strategy price equilibrium and find that competition is most relaxed when there exists some switchers.

This paper provides two characterizations of the retailer’s markup relative to the manufacturer’s markup in vertical relationships with homogeneous manufacturers and homogeneous retailers. We first show that retailer’s relative markup is equal to the ratio of the retail pass-through to the...

This paper studies the ambiguous welfare effects of compatibility in a platform market with endogenous content provision. Compatibility can be particularly harmful if it leads to reduced content but can be beneficial if content is sufficiently increased.

This paper analyzes the unilateral choices of application compatibility by platforms and the endogenous affiliations of two different groups (content providers and users). We find a novel result that for both platforms to unilaterally choose application compatibility is not an equilibrium unless...