We examine the competitive effects of the vertical integration of gasoline refineries and retailers in the U.S. Adapting the first-order condition approach of static oligopoly games to the analysis of vertically related oligopolies, we develop a novel framework for directly evaluating the...

We study the impact of the Euro on prices charged by online retailers within the EU. Our data spans the period before and after the Euro was introduced, covers a variety of products, and includes countries inside and outside of the Eurozone. Our main finding is that the Euro changeover in 2002...

We construct a model in which oligopolistic firms decide where to locate. Firms choose to locate either in a country where employment protection implies costly output adjustments or in one without adjustment costs. Using a two-period three-stage game with uncertainty it is demonstrated that...

Investment in information acquisition can be used strategically by banks as a commitment device to augment market power. A static two-period economy with informationally heterogeneous banks is analyzed. Information acquisition limits asymmetries of information and competitors' rents ex post. If...

This paper focuses on the effects of product market integration on wage-bargaining institutions in a one-way trade model of an international Cournot oligopoly. It shows that product market integration (i.e. a reduction in trade costs either from an arbitrary or from its optimal level) lowers the...

Consider a seller and a buyer bargaining over the price of an agricultural product in a developing economy. Think of the following common bargaining deal: the seller tries to persuade the buyer to accept a higher price and, in return, give the buyer a deal (i.e., extra units of the product for...

We set up a three-firm model of spatial competition to analyse how a merger affects the incentives for relocation, and conversely, how the possibility of relocation affects the profitability of the merger, particularly for the non-participating firm. The analysis is carried out for the...

This paper examines how unionisation structures that differ in the degree of wage centralisation affect firms' incentives to increase labour productivity. We distinguish three modes of unionisation with increasing degree of centralisation. (1) "Decentralisation" where wages are determined...