By using general information structures and precision criteria based on the dispersion of conditional expectations, we study how oligopolists' information acquisition decisions may change the effects of information sharing on the consumer surplus. Sharing information about individual cost...

We investigate the sensitivity of consumer surplus estimates to parametric assumptions on individual preference heterogeneity in a discrete choice framework. We compare results from a parametric random coefficients logit model and a recently proposed nonparametric sieve estimator. In particular,...

We examine the implications of pre-grant publication (PP) of patent applications in the context of a cumulative innovation model. We show that pre-grant publication of patents lead to fewer applications and fewer inventions, but it raises the probability that new technologies will reach the...

A government wanting to promote an efficient allocation of resources as measured by the total surplus, should strategically delegate to its competition authority a welfare standard with a bias in favour of consumers. A consumer bias means that some welfare increasing mergers will be blocked....

This paper proposes a framework to model empirically welfare effects that are associated with a price change in a population of heterogeneous consumers. Individual demands are characterized by a nonseparable model which is nonparametric in the regressors, as well as monotonic in unobserved...

Für die neue Statistik der Strom- und Erdgasdurchschnittspreise hat das Statistische Bundesamt erstmals im Jahr 2020 Durchschnittspreise für Strom und Erdgas beim Verkauf an Endkunden im Haushaltssektor und Nicht-Haushaltssektor erfasst. Die ermittelten Preise werden gegliedert nach...

This papers studies the effects on service quality and consumer surplus of a minimum price which is fixed by a bureaucratic non-monopolistic professional association. It shows that the price set by a Niskanen-type professional assocation will maximize consumer surplus only if consumers demand...

Within the last three years, Google has acquired YouTube and DoubleClick and has attempted to control part of Yahoo!'s search advertising business. Two of the deals have not raised antitrust concerns by competition authorities. I review these deals with a focus on consumer welfare. Consumers are...