This paper analyzes mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a previously neglected channel of industrial restructuring in the face of trade liberalization. Using the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 as a natural experiment, I show that trade liberalization leads to a significant...

In this paper we discuss some of the most important economic issues raised in European Commission vs. Microsoft (2004) concerning the market for work group servers. In our view, the most important economic issues relate to (a) foreclosure incentives and (b) innovation effects of the proposed...

We study the repeal of a regulation that imposed maximum wholesale and retail markups for all but five fresh fruits and vegetables. We compare the prices of products affected by regulation before and after the policy change and use the unregulated products as a control group. We find that...

Scrutiny of potential mergers by the European Commission often focuses on unilateral effects or single firm dominance. But some cases have involved concerns over coordinated effects: the concern that the merger could increase the likelihood of consumer harm through tacit collusion by the reduced...

This paper contains an empirical analysis demand for “work-group” (or low-end) servers. Servers are at the centre of many US and EU anti-trust debates, including the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger and investigations into the activities of Microsoft. One question in these policy decisions is...

In this paper we investigate the evolution of quality adjusted prices for servers motivated by two facts. First, the productivity acceleration in the US economy since the mid 1990s is closely linked to spread of information technology of which networked computing is a large component. Second,...

This paper gives a general framework for analysing a trade divergence that runs across both the New International trade theory and the traditional analysis of export policy. The source of the trade divergence, the motive for intervention and the analytical framework is shown to be the same in...

It is often argued that constraints on access to new information and communication environments will disappear as services decline in price and as customers and producers engage in new market relationships. Following this line of argument, the relative scarcity of communication and information...

In this paper we introduce an analytic-interactive mediation approach to facilitate conflict resolution in collective bargaining. Based on field observations of labor-management negotiations in the German railway industry, we develop an approach which combines human mediation with IT-based...