The most cost-effective policies for achieving CO2 abatement (e.g., carbon taxes) fail to get off the ground politically because of unacceptable distributional consequences. This paper explores CO2 abatement policies designed to address distributional concerns. Using an intertemporal numerical...

For 70 Japanese manufacturing industries, I test the simple Cournot hypothesis of proportionality between industry price-cost margin and Herfindahl index against the non-nested alternative that the industry price-cost margin remains constant in the face of varying Herfindahl index, as it would...

Multimarket contact is perceived to be one of those factors, which can facilitate and sustain implicit collusive (cooperative) arrangements. This paper attempts to develop new approaches to study the interdependence of firm behaviour across markets, especially in the context of differentiated...

Der Rechtsstreit des Software-Anbieters Microsoft mit den US-amerikanischen Wettbewerbsbehörden machte in letzter Zeit häufig Schlagzeilen. Es geht dabei primär um die Frage, ob das Unternehmen den Internet Explorer im Zwangspaket mit dem Betriebssystem Windows verkaufen darf. Das...

This paper examines the issue of market foreclosure by airline partnerships with antitrust immunity. Overlapping the data on frequency of service and passenger volumes on nonstop routes on the transatlantic airline market with the information on dynamics of airline partnerships, we find evidence...

In a framework with an upstream monopoly and a downstream duopoly, we analyze the impact of convex costs on the downstream level. In contrast to the case of constant marginal costs, vertical integration does not imply complete market foreclosure. While the non-integrated downstream firm receives...

Incumbent firms have two basic possibilities to improve their competitive position in the product market: investment in R&D and the creation of entry barriers to the disadvantage of potential rivals, e.g. through lobbying activities, campaign contributions, bribes or the adoption of incompatible...

We study regulation of the auditing profession in a model where audit quality is unobservable and enforcing regulation is costly. The optimal audit standard falls short of the first-best audit quality, and is increasing in the riskiness of firms and in the amount of funding they seek. The model...