The European Commission's decision to block the GE/Honeywell merger in 2001 ignited a wave of criticism from US antitrust authorities and commentators not seen since the Boeing/McDonnell Douglas merger in the mid-90s. This revealed deep differences in the substance and enforcement of EC and US...

This paper presents a theoretical framework for analyzing pricing structures in debit card schemes featuring cardholders, retailers, their respective banks, and a network routing switch. The network routing switch controls the electronic debit card network and is jointly owned by the banks. In...

In two-sided markets, one widely observes skewed pricing strategies, in which the price mark-up is much higher on one side of the market than the other. Using a simple model of two-sided markets, we show that, under constant elasticity of demand, skewed pricing is indeed profit maximizing. The...

In the Netherlands the enormous uptake in the usage of debit cards has been the main driver for the rapid developments in non-cash, point-of-sale, payments. However, several practices in the Dutch electronic payments services industry with regard to pricing and infrastructure have attracted...

Standard policies to correct market power and selection can be misguided when these two forces co-exist. Using a calibrated model of employer-sponsored health insurance, we show that the risk adjustment commonly used by employers to offset adverse selection often reduces the amount of...

This paper is motivated by the US freight railroad industry, which is characterized by a major restructuring over the last 30 years. In particular, the number of active firms decreased from 26 in 1978 to seven in 2006 due to several takeover waves. The empirical focus concerns the estimation of...

The paper offers an overview of the literature on bundling in the telecommunications sector and its application in the Spanish market. We argue that the use of bundling in the provision of services is associated to technological reasons. Therefore, there appears no need to regulate bundling...

The paper discusses the Russian power sector reform plan, approved by the government in July 2001, which outlines the framework for competition and changes in ownership structure. The paper focuses on the following issues related to the plan: restructuring of regional energos and large...

Kazakhstan is at the forefront of power sector reform in the EBRD’s countries of operations. Starting in 1996, a regulator was set up, the industry was unbundled, some distribution and generation companies were privatised, and the large user market was liberalised. A number of reform...

By introducing n (1) firms with infinite cross-price elasticity (i.e. generic drugs), we explore the effects of competition on the optimal pricing strategies under a Reference Pricing Scheme (RPS). A two-stage model repeated infinite number of times is presented. When stage 1 is competitive, the...