This paper analyses the impact of competition among downstream firms on an upstream firm's payoff and on its incentive to vertically integrate when firms on both segments negotiate optimal contracts. We argue that tougher competition decreases the downstream industry profit, but improves the...

In this paper, we discuss how fraud losses impact the price structure chosen by a monopolistic payment platform, if merchants can invest in fraud detection technologies. We show that liability rules bias the structure of the prices charged by the platform to consumers and merchants with respect...

A firm chooses a price and the product information it discloses to a consumer whose tastes are privately known. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the match function for full disclosure to be the unique equilibrium outcome whatever the costs and prior beliefs about product and...

Afriat proved the equivalence of a variant of the strong axiom of revealed preference and the existence of a solution to a set of linear inequalities. From this solution he constructed a utility function rationalizing the choices of a competitive consumer. We extend Afriat's theorem to a class...

In 'The Methodology of Positive Economics' (1953), Milton Friedman linked the adoption of a falsificationist methodology to the rejection of monopolistic competition as a valid assumption, thus elaborating a point made earlier by George Stigler in 'Monopolistic Competition in Retrospect' (1949)....

We provide a discipline for beliefs formation through a model of subjective beliefs, in which agents hold incorrect but strategic beliefs. More precisely, we consider beliefs as a strategic variable that agents can manipulate to maximize their utility from trade. Our framework is therefore an...

We study an economywhere intermediaries compete over contracts in a nonexclusive insurance market affected by moral hazard. In this context, we show that, contrarily to what is commonly believed, market equilibria may fail to be efficient even if the planner is not allowed to enforce...