We revisit the effects of switching costs on dynamic competition. We consider stationary Markovian strategies, with market shares being the state variable, and characterize a relatively simple Markov Perfect pricing equilibrium at which there is switching by some consumers at all times. For the...

This paper examines the welfare implication of banning price discrimination in the intermediate goods market in which a monopolistic supplier contracts with asymmetric downstream retailers. We demonstrate that the supplier has a strong incentive to manipulate the interdependent demand structure...

We re-examine the view that a ban on price discrimination in input markets is particularly desirable in the presence of buyer power. This argument crucially depends on an inverse relationship between downstream firms’ profits and the uniform input price. Assuming different input efficiencies...

Conventional wisdom attributes different economic outcomes of uniform pricing and price discrimination to the heterogeneity in market conditions or market participants, such as differences in demand elasticity or production costs. We offer a new explanation for the observed differences that...

In this article we examine the effects of third degree price discrimination in asymmetric Cournot oligopolies. We show that the average price is not affected by the extent of price discrimination. We find that the asymmetry between firms is reflected only by the output produced for the...

We study the welfare effects of parallel trade (PT) considering investment in quality. We thus revisit the case for PT in research-intensive industries. We find that PT may raise quality, depending on how preferences for quality differ across countries. Conditional on quality, consumer surplus...

This letter addresses the second-degree price discrimination issue when a monopolized product is tied with environmental quality. The monopolist may degrade environmental quality too much when marginal valuations of environmental quality and the good itself are positively related across consumers.

Consider the Hotelling linear spatial duopoly with firm uncertainty over the consumer mean. As uncertainty about the mean grows relative to the dispersion of consumers, competitive locations become socially optimal. A limit result for discontinuous, log-concave densities is also established.

The two central pricing rules contained in most antitrust laws are prohibitions of below-cost pricing and prohibitions of discriminatory pricing. This article shows that the rule against discriminatory pricing may actually induce firms to charge exclusionary below-cost prices, even in the...

This note investigates the effects of a large horizontal merger on the shape of the 1-to-12 h price menus offered by parking garages in Paris. The merger caused low-end prices to increase proportionally more than high-end prices. This results in larger discounts on longer hours and hence in more...