There is a recent tendency toward encouraging universities to merge. This policy is based on the idea that mergers create synergy gains that enhance universities’ prestige by increasing their international visibility. However, this process may reduce competition for both research funds and...

In this paper we analyze the effect strategic delegation on the profitability of mergers in the context of a Cournot oligopoly with linear demand and cost functions. It is assumed that, after the merging process is completed, the owner of every independent firm decides its managerial incentive...

In this paper, we study the return to human capital variables for wages of workers observed in Tunisian matched worker-firm data in 1999. We develop a new method based on multivariate analysis of firm characteristics, which allows us most of the benefits obtained by introducing firm dummies in...

In this paper we analyze firms' ability to tacitly collude on pricesin an infinitely repeated duopoly game of vertical productdifferentiation. We show that firms collude if and only if their discountfactor is high enough, i.e. if they value future profits sufficiently. We alsoshow that a lower...

The US Merger Guidelines consider that the anticompetitive effect of a horizontal merger is increasing in the initial market concentration and decreasing in the elasticity of demand. These ideas are studied in a setting where identical firms compete à la Cournot and marginal cost is constant....

Competition has long been regarded as productivity enhancing. Understanding the mechanism by which competition affects innovation and productivity is therefore an important topic for economic policy. The main contribution of this paper is to disentangle the relationship between competition and...

From Tunisian matched worker-firm data in 1999, we study the returns to human capital for workers observed in two leading manufacturing sectors. Workers in the mechanical and electrical industries (IMMEE) benefit from higher returns to human capital than their counterparts in the...

In this paper, we study the return to human capital variables for wages of workers observed in Tunisian matched worker-firm data in 1999. This reveals us how returns to human capital in a Less Developed Country like Tunisia may differ from the industrial countries usually studied with matched...

In a setting where symmetric firms compete a la Cournot and costs are linear, the degree of concavity is identified as the main determinant of merger profitability. This allows to generalize the results in Salant et al (1983) and Cheung (1992).

In this paper, we draw some lessons from the Tunisian experience of social reforms and associated civil conflict. Our main interest is the riots that occurred after subsidy cuts and the attempts at substitution of price subsidies by direct cash transfers. We propose new welfare indicators apt to...