This paper revisits the optimal entry decision in a differentiated product market where customer demand is price-sensitive and depends on a per-unit transport cost. We show that too few firms may enter for high entry cost and high transport cost compared to the socially optimal outcome.

This article explores the propensity to patent in the light of the disclosure effect. Unlike earlier approaches concerned with the patenting decision, we take into account that a disclosure effect may decrease the merits of patenting by facilitating inventing around the patent for competitors....

This paper studies the welfare effects of third-degree price discrimination under oligopolistic competition with horizontal product differentiation. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for price discrimination to improve social welfare: the degree of substitution must be sufficiently...

Posada and Straume (J Econ 83:243–265, <CitationRef CitationID="CR5">2004</CitationRef>) analyze a three-firm model of a circular city where two of the firms merge and may choose to relocate. They propose an equilibrium with relocation where taking part in the merger yields higher profits than staying outside, i.e., relocation may solve...</citationref>

We investigate the profitability and locational effects of two-firm Cournot mergers in the circular city. As compared with the linear market, we find that mergers turn out to be unprofitable much earlier.

This paper applies the ‘hypothetical monopolist’ test of market definition to a retail market with products differentiated by means of location and other dimensions. The test for defining the relevant product and geographic market follows the conditions required by the European Union...

In industrial organization analysis one of the most studied subject is product differentiation. In most cases it is considered an anticompetitive strategy carried out by dominant firms. In this work we tried to ask to ourselves what is the real role played by this strategy in the market. To...

Mandatory network unbundling is one of the most important topics in regulatory economics today. The concept has crucial importance in the deregulation of many previously regulated industries including electricity, telecommunications, gas and railroads. Upon initial examination, determining the...

The problem of non-existence of perfect equilibrium in the original model of Harold Hotelling and the principle of minimum differentiation he suggested have been tackled on different grounds. This paper provides a survey on the address approach to horizontal product differentiation and the...

Customer-side price transparency affects sustainability of collusion in a duopoly model of spatial product differentiation with elastic demand. When product differentiation is significant, more transparency facilitates collusion as measured by the critical discount factor. For the case where...