In this article, we provide a novel measure of product differentiation by observing consumer search behavior directly. We track individual consumers in a price search engine and generate a measure of distance in product space, based on goods surveyed conjointly within individual search episodes....

I present a game-theoretic model where economic competition and attention competition are interdependent. On the one hand the effort to attract consumer attention depends on the value of attention to the firm which depends on the grade of price competition among all perceived firms. On the other...

This paper explores how social interactions among consumers shape markets. In a two-country model, consumers meet and exchange information about the quality of the goods. As information spreads, the demands evolve, affecting the prices and quantities manufactured by profit-maximizing firms. We...

We investigate how consumer information affects price adjustment in the Austrian retail gasoline market. Our measure of consumer information is obtained from detailed census data on commuting behavior, as commuters can freely sample prices on their commuting route and are thus better informed...

In this paper we investigate collusion in an infinitely repeated Bertrand duopoly where firms have different discount factors. In order to study how a collusive agreement is reached we model the equilibrium selection as an alternating-offer bargaining game. The selected equilibrium has several...

When firms meet in multiple markets, they can leverage punishment ability in one market to sustain collusion in another. This is the first paper to test this theory for multiproduct retailers that sell consumer goods online. With data on the universe of consumer goods sold online in Sweden, I...

In a model with manufacturer and retailer competition, we show that RPM facilitates manufacturer cartels when retailers have an outside option to selling the manufacturer's product. Because retailers have an effective outside option, the manufacturer can only ensure contract acceptance by...

The buyer solicits bids from suppliers with different cost distributions defined by their capacities. The expected market share of each supplier is the ratio of its capacity to the industry capacity. The buyer's optimal reserve price declines with increases in the concentration of the industry....

Price discrimination by consumer's purchase history is widely used in regulated industries, such as communication or utilities, both by incumbents and entrants. I show that such discrimination can have surprisingly negative welfare effects { even though prices and industry profits fall, so does...

We introduce a fairly general licensing model with an endogenous industry structure - in terms of number of active firms - and general licensing contracts. We show that when the patentee can employ contracts that can condition on market entry or price, it can implement an outcome that yields...