We investigate the effects of port privatization on port usage fees, firm profits, and welfare. Our model consists of an international duopoly with two ports and two markets. When the unit transport cost is high, port privatization reduces port usage fees, although neither government has an...

Under a simple Cournot model with vertical relations, when downstream firms engage in process R&D, the profits of upstream firms in which upstream competition exists may be larger than those in which each upstream firm has a bilateral monopoly relation with its buyer (downstream firm).

We extend the well-known spatial competition model (d'Aspremont et al., 1979) to a continuous time model in which two firms compete in each instance. Our focus is on the entry timing decisions of firms and their optimal locations. We demonstrate that the leader has an incentive to locate closer...

Friedman and Thisse (RAND Journal of Economics, 1993) show that spatial agglomeration appears in a standard two-stage location price model if the symmetric firms can collude in prices. We introduce a cost difference between two firms. We show that agglomeration never appears in a collusive...

We examine a game of competition with access provision in which service quality is endogenously determined through infrastructure upgrades with spillovers. There are two types of equilibria in the free competition regime. In particular, voluntary access provision with an access charge higher...

Should civil servants (employees in the public sector) be allowed to bargain collectively? To answer this question, we construct a model of unionized mixed duopoly and examine the regulatory framework of public institutions, especially focusing on a wage regulation imposed on the public firm....

This paper discusses competition between high-quality private service providers that maximize their own profits and a low-quality public service provider that maximizes social surplus. There are two heterogeneous consumer groups: those who demand only high-quality services and those who care...

The purpose of this paper is to provide a simple model to explain buyer–supplier relationships and identify factors that determine the chosen number of trading partners. We show that the optimal number of partners for a supplier is small, if it has low bargaining power, moderate economies of...

This paper examines the role of dual sourcing (e.g., outside options) in vertical and horizontal relations. In a bilateral monopoly market, if either the upstream or downstream firm has outside options, the other firm could lose from seemingly positive shocks, e.g., market expansion or...