In this paper we relate the economics of labeling genetically modified (GM) products to thetheory of grading and minimum quality standards. The model represents three stages in thesupply chain (farm production, marketing handlers, and final users) and allows explicitly for theaccidental...

We explore connections between the certainty equivalent return (CER) functional and theunderlying utility function. Curvature properties of the functional depend upon how utilityfunction attributes relate to Hyperbolic Absolute Risk Aversion (HARA) type utility functions.If the CER functional is...

Taking location as given, we study imperfect competition on a circular city. In Bertrandoligopoly, we identify price harmonics as a function of firm unit costs and locations. The sumof oligopoly profits is larger when costs and/or locations are more dispersed in the ‘dihedralmajorization’...

Market concentration ratios are popular statistics for characterizing the extent of marketdominance in an imperfectly competitive market, but these ratios may not agree whencomparing two markets. Neither do they necessarily agree with the Herfindahl-Hirschman orentropy indices. This letter...

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and heterogeneous southernfirms that compete in a final product market. We assume southern firms differ in their intrinsiccosts and their ability to adapt technology and study southern incentives to protect intellectualproperty rights. We find...

Our context involves Cournot oligopolists producing NM products at constant marginal costs when preferences are quasi-linear. We identify relationships between second moments of unit costs and second moments of firm-level production. For example, a larger variance in unit costs of a product...

This paper considers competition between two multinationals (U, J) who compete in a third market (K).The multinationals have similar cost structures, but differ in that J comes from a country that is “culturallysimilar” to K, and hence produces products that match more closely the...

When adjustment costs are present, cyclical preference and technology heterogeneities in aproduct’s markets induce cycles in production. We exploit cyclic and dihedral groupinvariances in an industry’s cost technology to describe these patterns. We show whenequilibrium cyclical pricing and...

Welfare in a two-product Cournot oligopoly is shown to increase (decrease) with an increase incorrelation between unit costs when the outputs complement (substitute) in demand. A morequalified correlation structure is required for the result to apply in a three-product Cournotoligopoly when...

We develop a model with one innovating northern firm and several heterogeneousSouthern firms that compete in a final product market. We assume the southern firms differ intheir ability to adapt technology and use this heterogeneity to study the differing incentives ofsouthern governments to...