The participation of interest groups in public policy making is unavoidable. Its unavoidable nature is only matched by the universal suspicion with which it has been seen by both policy makers and the public. Recently, however, there has been a growing literature that examines the participation...

In this paper, we investigate empirically the effect of two recent domestic airline alliances. We find that both alliances benefited consumers - average fares fell and total traffic increased after the creation of the alliances on those city pairs affected by the alliances. We also find that...

Using data collected between August 1999 and January 2000 covering 399 books, including New York Times bestsellers, computer bestsellers, and random books, we examine pricing by thirty-two online bookstores. One common prediction is that the reduction in search costs on the Internet relative to...

Open source methods for creating software rely on developers who voluntarily reveal code in the expectation that other developers will reciprocate. Open source incentives are distinct from earlier uses of intellectual property, leading to different types of inefficiencies and different biases in...

In a typical bank credit card transaction, the merchant's bank pays an interchange fee, collectively determined by all participating banks, to the cardholder's bank. This paper shows how the interchange fee balances charges between cardholders and merchants under imperfect competition. The...

Consider a durable goods producer that potentially has market power in the aftermarkets associated with its products. An important question is to what extent, if any, should the antitrust laws restrict the firm's behavior in these aftermarkets? In this paper we explore a number of models...

This paper shows that up-front payments can play a crucial role in providing efficient investment incentives when contracts are incomplete. They can eliminate the overinvestment effect identified by Rogerson [1984] and Shavell [1980] when courts use an expectation damage remedy. This method...

Economic growth depends in large part on technological change. Laws governing intellectual property rights protect inventors from competition in order to create incentives for them to innovate. Antitrust laws constrain how a monopolist can act in order to maintain its monopoly in an attempt to...

This paper analyzes the question: When should a single firm have a duty to deal with another? The paper uses a series of economic models to answer the question, assuming the goal is to prevent harm to competition, and applies the economic analysis to the leading cases to show when antitrust...

This essay provides an overview of the central theoretical law and economics insights concerning antidiscrimination law across a variety of contexts including discrimination in labor markets, housing markets, consumer purchases, and policing. The different models of discrimination based on...