Patent pools allow a group of firms to combine their patents as if they were a single firm. Theoretical models predict that pools encourage innovation in pool technologies, albeit at the cost of innovation in substitutes. Empirical evidence is scarce because modern pools are too recent to allow...

The internet has facilitated the creation of new markets characterized by large scale, increased customization, rapid innovation and the collection and use of detailed consumer and market data. I describe these changes and some of the economic theory that has been useful for thinking about...

This paper presents some of the most important microeconomic tools used in assessing antitrust and merger cases by the competition authorities. By explaining the way that microeconomic concepts like “market power”, “critical loss” or “price elasticity of demand” are used by the...

This report is the result of the presentation of the Thesis Plan, performed on December 13, 2011, during the activities of the Winter School of Doctoral Program in Technology Assessment. It is intended to describe the main information about the Thesis Plan and also the definition of the main...

By looking closely at the underlying structural causes of the discontinuity that appeared in the behavior of the U.S. stock market at 2:40pm in the afternoon of 6th May 2010. What transpired in those 7 minutes is viewed best as a hitherto unrecognized “emergent property” of structural...

Over the last decade, consumers have tripled their use of credit cards as more merchants have increased their acceptance of them. This increase suggests that incentives in today's marketplace favor greater credit card use by consumers and acceptance by merchants. In this paper, we study the set...

Traditional theory may suggest that stochastic effects could undermine the validity of a structure-based antitrust policy, but this issue has not been formally addressed. We do so here, finding that either stochastic costs or stochastic demand can indeed undermine the validity of such a policy...

The U.S. Bankruptcy code changed dramatically with the passage of The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act Of 2005. This act increased the costs and decreased the benefits of bankruptcy to consumers. Supporters of the law claimed that it would benefit consumers as well as...

The main contribution of this paper is a simple theoretical framework and empirical estimations explaining the behavior of the manufacturers. The paper focuses on the frequently used methods of demand estimation for discrete choice models to analyze the Iranian automobile market. It shows how...