The tremendous growth of markets for credit derivatives since the mid 1990's has raised questions regarding the role of these instruments in the banking in- dustry which is heavily exposed to credit risk. However, while recent literature mainly focused on pricing and optimal decisions regarding...

In the economic literature on market competition, firms are often modeled as single decision makers and the internal organization of the firm is neglected (unitary player assumption). However, as the literature on strategic delegation suggests, one can not generally expect that the behavior of...

We analyze duopoly Bertrand competition under network effects. We consider both incompatible and compatible products. Our main result is that network effects create a fundamental conflict between the maximization of social welfare and consumer surplus whenever products are incompatible. While...

We analyze market dynamics under Bertrand duopoly competition in industries with network effects and consumer switching costs. Consumers form installed bases, repeatedly buy the products, and differ with respect to their switching costs. Depending on the ratio of switching costs to network...

We study interaction effects between intra-firm conflicts and interfirm competition on a duopolistic market with seller firms employing one or more agents and implementing tournament incentives. We show that inter-firm competition leads to higher incentive intensity, higher efforts and output...

For a market of horizontal product differentiation, the paper examines the effects of the level of competition on the firm's decision between a product and process innovation. When firms have to choose between the two types of innovation, it is demonstrated that both firms undertake the product...

Hospital markets are often characterised by price regulation and the existence of different ownership types. Using a Hotelling framework, this paper analyses the effect of different objectives of the hospitals on quality, profits, and overall welfare in a price regulated duopoly with symmetric...

Electronic coordination links markets at different locations that have initially been (partially) separated by transport costs. Rising competitive pressure should in turn affect incentives to differentiate products. In this paper investment decisions concerning transport cost reduction and...

Hospital markets are often characterised by price regulation and the existence of different ownership types. Using a Hotelling framework, this paper analyses the effect of heterogeneous objectives of the hospitals on quality differentiation, profits, and overall welfare in a price regulated...