Competition between parallel infrastructures incorporates opposing welfare effects. The gain from reduced deadweight loss might be out- weighed by the inefficient duplication of an existing infrastructure. Using data from broadband internet access for Western Europe 2000-2004, this paper...

Ramsey-Boiteux prices and monopoly prices are frequently regarded as being similar. This might suggest that, in particular in network in- dustries with large fixed costs, sometimes monopoly pricing is close to the Ramsey-Boiteux second best and welfare superior to imperfectly regulated prices....

While humans often care about sunk investment, animals are not subject to this sort of sunk cost behavior or "Concorde fallacy". This paper investigates a simple two stage decision problem under uncertainty. At the second stage, subjects can commit the Concorde fallacy by sticking to the first...

Scarce interconnector capacities are a severe obstacle to transregional competition and a unified market for electricity in the European Union. However, physically the interconnectors are rarely used up to capacity. This is due to the fact that the current allocation schemes make only limited...

The seasonal demand for natural gas requires supply flexibility. This "swing" is now largely provided in northwestern Europe by indigenous production. Declining reserves will increase the dependency on imports from far-off sources, which are less flexible. Hence, flexibility must be provided by...

The standard model by Laffont, Rey and Tirole (1998) treats termination fees as an instrument to increase market power in a one-shot game of horizontal product differentiation. We offer an alternative view in an infinitely repeated Bertrand competition. We focus on symmetrical calling patterns...