In the 16th century, foreign ships passing through the Sound had to pay ad valorem taxes, known as the Sound Dues. To give skippers an incentive to declare the true value of their cargo, the Danish Crown reserved the right to purchase it at the declared value. We show that this rule does not...

Where markets are insufficiently competitive, governments can intervene by auctioninglicenses to operate or by forcing divestitures. The Dutch government has doneexactly that, organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasolinestations and forcing the divestiture of outlets...

We develop a method to screen for local cartels. We first test whether there is statistical evidence of clustering of outlets that score high on some characteristic that is consistent with collusive behavior. If so, we determine in a second step the most suspicious regions where further...

Where markets are insufficiently competitive, governments can intervene by auctioninglicenses to operate or by forcing divestitures. The Dutch government has doneexactly that, organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasolinestations and forcing the divestiture of outlets...

This paper studies the competitive role of list prices. We argue that such prices are often more salient than actual retail prices, so consumers' purchase decisions may be influenced by them. Two firms compete by setting prices in a homogeneous product market. They first set a list price that...