We examine the informational role of targeted tax transfers used by local governments to attract corporate investment projects. The transfer may potentially be used to solve an information externality in which subsequent investments that follow the initial project may fail to occur even though...

We examine the bidding competition for a set of complementary assets arising between two firms who also compete in a differentiated product market. The bidding contest takes the form of an acquisition battle for a third firm initially holding the assets. Depending on the nature of product...

The Federal Trade Commission’s successful challenge to the proposed merger of Heinz and Beech-Nut baby food operations in 2001 remains a controversial case that raises concern over the role of cost efficiencies in merger analysis. Although the FTC argued that the merger would result in an...

We develop a model of spatial competition to explain the high level of spending on social services that distinguishes American churches or faith-based organizations (FBOs). The model predicts that such spending, measured on a per member basis, rises as the equilibrium structure of the religious...

Cost synergies are an explicitly recognized justification for a two-firm merger and empirical techniques are now widely used to assess the impact of cost-reducing mergers on prices and welfare in the postmerger market. We show that if the merger occurs in a vertically product differentiated...

This paper considers the possibility that an important role of computerization and information technology in strengthening the long boom of the 1990’s may have been to lower price-cost margins principally by facilitating price discrimination and “versioning, or that this may be a convenient...