Firms signal high quality through high prices even if the market structure is highly competitive and price competition is severe. In a symmetric Bertrand oligopoly where products may differ only in their quality, production cost is increasing in quality and the quality of each firm’s product...

We consider the consequences of a shared brand name such as geographical names used to identify high quality products, for the incentives of otherwise autonomous firms to invest in quality. We contend that such collective brand labels improve communication between sellers and consumers, when the...

We present a theoretical model in tourism economics, assuming that the market for tourism is an oligopoly with differentiated products. Destinations (i.e., countries, regions, sites or even firms) can invest in order to improve their carrying capacity that can be interpreted as the stock of...

On an increasing scale auctions are used to allocate the licenses tooperate on markets which are thought notsuited for free entry. According to standard economic arguments, thelicense fees paid at the auction will notaffect consumer prices since they constitute a sunk cost. Thisstandard view is...

Despite the mixed empirical evidence, many economists stillhold to the view that Internet will promote competition betweenfirms,thereby lowering prices and increasing economic welfare. This paperpresents a search model that provides a different view. We analyzethemarket for a homogeneous good...

In this paper we discuss a locational model with a profit-maximizing objective. The model can be illustrated by the followingsituation. There is a set of potential customers in a given region. A firm enters the market and wants to sell a certainproduct to this set of customers. The location and...

This paper develops an economic argument relating auctions to high marketprices. At the core of the argument is the claim that market competition andbidding in an auction should be analyzed as part of one game, where the pricingstrategies in the market subgame depend on the bidding strategies...

This paper is the first to examine the effect of minimum price guaranteesin a sequential search model. Minimum price guarantees are notadvertised and only known to consumers when they come to the shop.We show that in such an environment, minimum price guarantees increasethe value of buying the...

We analyze maximal cartel prices in infinitely-repeated oligopoly models under leniency where fines are linked to illegal gains, as often outlined in existing antitrust regulation, and detection probabilities depend on the degree of collusion. We introduce cartel culture that describes how...

Basing-point pricing is known to have been abused by geographically dispersed firms in order to eliminate competition on transportation costs. This paper develops a topographic test for collusive basing-point pricing. The method uses transaction data (prices, quantities) and customer project...