A common approach to merger simulations used in antitrust cases is to calibrate demand from market shares and a few additional parameters. When the products involved in the merger case are differentiated along several dimensions, the resulting diversion ratios may be very different from those...

Farrell and Shapiro proposed a simple test of the possible upward pricing pressure (UPP) following a merger. They showed that the test may give false negatives, that is, indicate that a merger may not give an UPP, while a more comprehensive test would indicate the opposite. We show that their...

This paper addresses whether children's exposure to parents receiving disability benefits induces a higher probability of receiving such benefits themselves. Most OECD countries experience an increasing proportion of the working-age population receiving permanent disability benefits. Using data...

Thermal-based power stations rely on water for cooling purposes. These water sources may be subject to incidents of scarcity, environmental regulations and competing economic concerns. This paper analyses the effect of water scarcity and increased river temperatures on German electricity prices...

Norway has a rather high labor force participation rate and a very low unemployment rate. Part of the reason for this fortunate situation is the so-called “tripartism”: a broad agreement among unions, employers and government to maintain a high level of coordination in wage bargaining. This...

Globally installed wind power capacity has grown tremendously since 2000. This study focuses on the local economic impacts of wind power deployment. A theoretical model shows that wind power deployment is not necessarily driven by locally-accruing economic payoffs, but also by other factors such...

This paper provides evidence on price rigidity at the product- and firm-level in Norway. A strong within-firm synchronization is found supporting the theory of economies of scope in menu costs. The industry synchronization effects are found to be small suggesting that firms either have some...

This paper investigates the existence of markups and their cyclical behaviour at industry sector level. Markups are given as a price-cost relation that is estimated from a dynamic, structural model of the firm. The firms face costly adjustment of labour and potential financial constraints. The...

This study develops and uses a successive oligopoly model, with an unobservable non-linear tariff between upstream and downstream firms, to analyze the possible anti-competitive effects of an upstream merger. We find that an upstream merger may lead to higher average prices paid by downstream...

Existing micro evidence of firms' price changes tends to show a downward sloping hazard rate – the longer the price of a product has remained the same, the less likely it is that the price will change. Using a panel of Norwegian plant- and product-specific prices, we also find a downward...