We study the strategic choice of compatibility between two initially incompatible network goods in a two-stage game played by an incumbent and an entrant firm. Compatibility may be achieved by means of a converter. We derive a number of results under different assumptions about the nature of the...

In a world with private information about the quality of technology we find that there are situations where relatively more technologically superior firm will license its technology but relatively less technologically superior firm will not license its technology. This finding is opposite to the...

The residential UK electricity market was opened for the first time in 1999, introducing choice of supplier, and about 40% of households changed supplier in the first four years. After three years price caps were removed. We review this process and assess the competitiveness of the market by...

Noncooperative network-formation games in oligopolies analyze optimal connection structures that emerge when linking represent the appropriation of cost-reducing one-way externalities. These models reflect situations where one firm access to another firm’s (public or private) information and...

We show that returns policies do increase manufacturer profitability by attenuating price competition between retailers. This effect holds only in the presence of end-user demand uncertainty. The conditions under which a returns policy raises the manufacturer's profit are weaker when retailing...

This paper characterizes the properties of equilibrium location patterns in an Anderson-Neven-Pal model and uses these characteristics to comprehensively find the subgame perfect Nash equilibria, most of which are not yet found in the literature. Since the external competition effect may be...

This paper analyses oligopolies using the Cournot/Stackelberg framework, but allowing some firms to be pursueing aims other than profit maximisation. The existence of even a single output maximising firm can have dramatic effects on outputs, prices and welfare, even if such a firms faces...

The literature on technology licensing has ignored the importance of market power of the input supplier. In this paper we examine the impact of licensing in the downstream industry when the firms in the upstream industry have market power. We show that licensing in the downstream industry can...

This paper examines how the option for licensing affects research and development (R&D) and social welfare. We find that if cost reduction from R&D is sufficiently small and there is an option of licensing, firms will do non-cooperative R&D. In absence of licensing, firms will do cooperative R&D...

Coordination Failure Diagnostics (CFD) is a model that analyses real market processes with the help of time pattern analysis and investigates whether they operate efficiently (See www.wiwi.uni-muenster.de/cfd). The CFD cartel-audit should enable the detection of cartels via characteristic market...