Public agencies mainly rely on two modes to procure goods and services: auctions and direct negotiations. We study a 1994 policy change in Germany that introduced the possibility to procure rail services in auctions as well as in direct negotiations with the incumbent. We analyze the effect of...

This paper analyzes decisions of multi-product firms regarding product selection, innovation and advertising as choices of consumer valuation distributions. We show that a profit-maximizing monopolist chooses these distributions so as to maximize the dispersion of the valuation differences...

In Germany, competitive franchising is increasingly being used to procure passenger railway services that were previously provided by a state monopolist. This paper analyzes 77 tenders that differ with respect to network size, service frequency, contract duration and the proximity to other lines...

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 profits,...

We consider market dynamics in a reduced form model. In the simplest version, there are two investors and several small noninvesting firms. In each period, one investor can acquire a small firm, the other investor decides about market entry. After that all firms play an oligopoly game. We derive...

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...

To examine the impact of globalization on managerial compensation, we consider a matching model where a number of firms compete both in the product market and in the managerial market. We show that globalization, i.e. the simultaneous integration of product markets and managerial pools, leads to...

Are initial competitive advantages self-reinforcing, so that markets exhibit an endogenous tendency to be dominated by only a few firms? Although this question is of great economic importance, no systematic empirical study has yet addressed it. Therefore, we examine experimentally whether firms...

This paper studies the effects of introducing competition for local passenger railway markets in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. We compare the evolution of the frequency of service on lines that were exposed to competition for the market with lines procured by direct negotiations with...