We study the welfare effects of non-binding advance price announcements. Applying a differentiated Bertrand model with horizontal products and asymmetric information, we find that such announcements can help firms to gain information on each other thereby allowing them to achieve higher profits....

Our survey reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on all alternative policies to promote the deployment of new fiber-based communications infrastructure. Since such investment is expected to induce substantial positive externalities, dynamic efficiency becomes a particularly important...

Due to being much better documented, legal cartels have recently attracted the interest of many researchers who aim to understand the functioning of illegal cartels in detail. This paper contributes to the question of what we can learn from legal cartels by taking a closer look at the cement...

Our survey reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on all alternative policies to promote the deployment of new fiber-based communications infrastructure. Since such investment is expected to induce substantial positive externalities, dynamic efficiency becomes a particularly important...

The paper studies the effects of the Pfizer and Pharmacia (2003) merger on competition in the Swiss pharmaceutical market and compares the assessment of the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) with the post-merger market developments. We find that the merger has had a miniscule impact on the...

In 2002, the Swiss Competition Commission (COMCO) introduced a Notice on the Competitive Treatment of Vertical Restraints in Automobile Trade ('Car Notice'). The objective of the Car Notice has been to strengthen competition in the Swiss car market, in particular by avoiding price-fixing...

We use T-100 traffic data and DB1B fare data from the U.S. Department of Transportation to identify patterns and effects of entry by network carriers and low-cost carriers in non-stop U.S. airline markets. For the sample period from 1996 to 2009, we find that entry activity of low-cost carriers...

This paper examines the issue of market foreclosure by airline partnerships with antitrust immunity. Overlapping the data on frequency of service and passenger volumes on nonstop routes on the transatlantic airline market with the information on dynamics of airline partnerships, we find evidence...

The paper provides a comprehensive survey of the economics behind the fight against hard core cartels. Differentiating between four subsequent stages - characterisation, welfare effects, enforcement and evaluation - the paper pays particular attention to cartel detection methods, the derivation...

The market developments in international air transportation have led to the dominance of three global airline alliances - Star, SkyTeam and oneworld. At the same time, members of these alliances receive increasingly more freedom in coordinating various aspects of joint operations, including...