We study the enforcement of competition policy against collusion under Leniency Programs, which gave reduced fines to firms revealing information ot the Antitrust Authority. Such programs give firms an incentive to break collusion, but may also have a pro-collusive effect, since they decrease...

In an industry characterised by secret vertical contracts, we consider a benchmark case where two vertical chains exist, with two upstream manufacturers selling to two downstream retailers, and show that the equilibrium prices are independent of whether upstream or downstream firms have all the...

This paper deals with the determinants of agents’ acquisition of information. Our econometric evidence shows that the general index of Italian share-prices and the series of Italy’s financial newspaper sales are cointegrated, and the former series Granger-causes the latter, thereby giving...

We consider an incumbent firm and a more efficient entrant, both offering a network good to several asymmetric buyers. The incumbent disposes of an installed base, while the entrant has a network of size zero at the outset, and needs to attract a critical mass of buyers to operate. We analyze...

This paper models a sequential merger formation game with endogenous efficiency gains in which every merger has to be submitted for approval to the Antitrust Authority (AA). Two different types of AA are studied: first a myopic AA, which judges a given merger without considering that subsequent...