The fundamental contribution of the paper is to contest the view that greater market contestability has non-negative effects on market performance. In a model where employees pose a threat of potential entry, we demonstrate that a reduction in barriers to entry causes no fall in industry price...

This paper presents a model of private bilateral and multilateral peering arrangements between Internet backbone providers when the network is congested. We study how different forms of interconnection and the competitive conditions of the market affect backbones' investments in network and...

The Microsoft antitrust case focused public attention on the role of antitrust enforcement in preserving the forces of innovation in high-technology markets. Traditionally, regulators focused on whether companies artificially hiked prices or reduced output. Now, they're increasingly likely to...

We analyze the central economic issues raised by U.S. v Microsoft. Network effects and economies of scale in applications programs created a barrier to entry for new operating system competitors, which the combination of Netscape Navigator and the Java programming language potentially could have...

Antimonopoly laws must contain effective provisions for the attack of exclusionary behavior by firms with market power while at the same time not attacking procompetitive behavior by entrants or incumbents. This paper suggests seven textual criteria by which a new law may be evaluated in its...

The paper seeks to fill the void in the empirical economics literature of U.S. antimerger policy. A new empirical measure of relief secured in a Section 7 case is proposed. The extent of obtained relief is modeled as a fraction of the competitive overlap subject to structural divestiture. The...

In this paper, we discuss the role of cable television networks and their ownership structure in promoting competition in the local access market. First, we show that the dual ownership of a local telephone network and a cable network, compared with separate ownership, may increase or decrease...

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires all incumbent local telephone companies to provide local entrants with access to various facilities and services of incumbents' local networks. In the case of Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) providing such cooperation is a pre-requisite for...

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...

We introduce call externalities in the standard model of network competition with termination-based price discrimination, and employ a simple graphical analysis to study the outcome of competition. In contrast to recent results in the literature, we find that even under linear pricing, access...