In this paper we show that, in the presence of buyer and seller power, a monopolist can enter into a costly contractual relationship with a low-quality supplier with the sole intention of improving its bargaining position relative to a high-quality supplier, without ever selling the good...

In this paper we analyze the private and public incentives towards skill acquisition when the skill level of workers determines the quality level of goods, and both labor and product markets are non competitive. We delve into the mechanisms that determine the equilibrium skill acquisition...

Online review aggregators, such as TripAdvisor, HotelClub and OpenTable help consumers identify the products and services that best match their preferences. The goal of this study is to understand the impact of online review aggregators on firms and consumers. We adopt Salop's circular city...

This paper aims at providing an explanation of the observed espresso price dispersion across major Italian cities. The empirical evidence suggests a positive relationships between the average espresso price in a city and the number of coffee shops (normalized for the adult population) operating...

The paper proves the existence of a subgame perfect Nash equilibrium in a vertically differentiated duopoly with uncovered market, for a large set of symmetric and asymmetric distributions of consumers, including, among others, all logconcave distributions. The proof relies on the 'income share...

This paper is about technology choices in a differentiated oligopoly. The main questions are: whether the position in the product space affects the choice of technology, how changes in fixed costs affect price outcomes, the strategic responses to policy interventions. The industry is an...

We investigate the optimal R&D portfolio of a single-product monopolist investing in cost-reducing activities accompanied by efforts improving the quality of its product. There emerges that the firm's relative incentives along the two directions are conditional upon market affluency, measured by...

The aim of this paper is to model the decisions of tourists and a monopolist firm when weather forecasts are available. Before deciding whether to go on holiday or not, but after the firm has decided and posted its price, tourists can look at weather forecasts. Our results show that the price...

The optimal design of two-part tariffs is investigated in a dynamic model where two firms belonging to the same supply chain invest in R&D activities to increase the quality of the final product. It is shown that the replication of the vertically integrated monopolist's performance can be...

Extending a brand beyond its original product category is a major strategy for long-term profitability. A brand owner can internalize the development of the extension product, or license the brand to an external partner in order to exploit the licensee's better capabilities and higher efficiency...