We develop a method to measure the intensity of competition between firms. Our method, which we call the Best Response Measure (BRM), is related to the conduct parameter method, but avoids the main problems associated with that method. The BRM relies on a very general framework and limited data...

Taiwan has been hailed as a world leader in the development of global innovation and industrial clusters for the past decade. This paper investigates the effects of industrial agglomeration on the use of the internet and internet intensity for Taiwan manufacturing firms, and analyses whether the...

This paper tests whether upstream R&D cooperation leads to downstream collusion. We consider an oligopolistic setting where firms enter in research joint ventures (RJVs) to lower production costs or coordinate on collusion in the product market. We show that a sufficient condition for...

We investigate the impacts of five airline mergers on one quality dimension, namely route frequency. We use monthly data on routes between the largest 64 US cities from 1999 to 2016. On average, the mergers decrease the frequency, but there are large differences between the five mergers. We...

We examine the relationship between the total size of an airline and its service quality by analysing over 4.8 million domestic flights within the USA in 2016. The total size of an airline is measured by its total market share, total amount of assets or total number of full-time equivalent...

The survival of firms under changes in the business environment caused by exogenous shocks may be explained using economic Darwinism. Exogenous shocks can cause ‘cleansing effects’ as shocks clean out unproductive firms so that available resources are allocated to the remaining more...

We empirically test the hypothesis that the discounts offered by firms to consumers who purchase tickets in advance increase with the intensity of competition. We develop a new measure of competition for which we use the proximity (in departure time) of a given flight to its competitors to infer...

This paper examines how collective bargaining through unions and workplace co-determination through works councils shape labour market imperfections and how labour market imperfections matter for employer wage premia. Based on representative German plant data for the years 1999-2016, we document...

This study investigates the energy efficiency (EE) gap, referring to private agents who are not making seemingly profitable investments to reduce energy use. We deploy a questionnaire among firms in the Netherlands in which we ask them about investment behavior and barriers to investing in EE. A...

The fraction of R&D active firms decreased in Switzerland but increased in the Netherlands from 2000-2016. This paper examines reasons for this divergence and its impact on productivity growth. Our micro-data reveal R&D concentration among high-productivity firms in Switzerland. Innovation...