Based upon time series data published by PTT prior to regulatory reform, this paper investigates whether Swiss telecommunications qualify as a natural monopoly. Employing the subadditivity concept for multiproduct industries, alternative specifications of quadratic cost functions are estimated....

This paper studies a network provider's incentives to invest in infrastructure quality. In a simple but general framework, we investigate how various institutional settings affect investment incentives. We show that under reasonable assumptions on demand, investment incentives are smaller under...

We aim to clarify the role of access charges under two-way network competition, employing a reduced-form approach. Retaining the key features of specific network competition models but imposing less structure, we analyze the impact of changes in access charges on linear and non-linear retail...

This paper provides evidence on the relation between the intensity of product market competition and the probability of exit. We adopt a natural experiment approach towards analyzing the impact of a tightening of Swiss antitrust legislation on exit probabilities. Based on a sample of more than...

This paper provides a theoretical rationale for non-binding retail price recommendations (RPRs) in vertical supply relations. Analyzing a bilateral manufacturer-retailer relationship with repeated trade, we show that linear relational contracts can implement the surplus-maximizing outcome. If...

We provide a framework for analyzing bilateral mergers when there is two-sided asymmetric information about firms’ types. We show that there is always a "no-merger" equilibrium where firms do not consent to a merger, irrespective of their type. There may also be a "cut-off" equilibrium if the...

We analyze a Bayesian merger game under two-sided asymmetric information about firm types. We show that the standard prediction of the lemons market model–if any, only low-type firms are traded–is likely to be misleading: Merger returns, i.e. the difference between pre- and post-merger...

This paper examines the determinants of mergers and bankruptcies, using firm level data from the Swiss Business Census and the Dun & Bradstreet exit database for Switzerland (1995-2000). Employing duration analysis, we find considerable differences in the determinants of mergers and...

This paper develops a simple reduced form model of two-way network competition with linear retail pricing. Using the techniques of supermodular games, it is demonstrated that the most important results from the existing literature do not depend on routinely invoked assumptions, such as specific...

We examine the competitive effects of the vertical integration of gasoline refineries and retailers in the U.S. Adapting the first-order condition approach of static oligopoly games to the analysis of vertically related oligopolies, we develop a novel framework for directly evaluating the...