Competition among profit-seeking firms in an oligopolistic industry inherently generates incentives for firms to commit to maximize a performance metric other than profit. We briefly review the underlying theory, analyze its ramifications in a Cournot duopoly, and consider feasibility...

This paper shows how market entry into an unprofitable market can be profitable for a firm. A firm's expansion into a new market can have a beneficial feedback effect for that firm in its "old market". By entering into a new market, the firm increases its produced quantity and has higher...

In a familiar setting of vertical differentiation where firms produce goods of distinct qualities at potentially different unit costs, I identify sufficient conditions for producing a higher quality good to be more (less) profitable

Weyl and Fabinger (2013) analyze the social incidence of competition and theoutput and welfare effects of third-degree price discrimination by considering thehypothetical entrance of exogenous quantity into a market. The formulas they use forthis purpose, however, are correct only for marginal...

The existence of reference price effects in consumer decision making is well documented in prior research, but few studies focus on its implications for firms' strategic behavior. Using a competitive model, we address this gap by examining how firms' product positioning and pricing strategies in...

This study investigates the profitability of a decrease in the degree of product differentiation. We consider a vertical duopoly with linear tariffs and find that both downstream firms can increase their profit after a decrease in the degree of product differentiation if each downstream firm...

We study the design of online platforms that aggregate information and facilitate transactions. Two different designs can be observed in the market: revealing platforms that disclose the identity of transaction partners (e.g. Booking) and anonymous platforms that do not (e.g. Hotwire). To...

When successive monopolies transact through noncooperative linear pricing, the resulting double markup decreases their joint profits relative to vertical integration. However, if there are downstream rivals (which are not double marginalized), the same noncooperative interaction often...

Search engines face an interesting tradeoff in choosing the way to display their results. While providing high quality unpaid, or “left side” results attracts users, doing so can also cannibalize the revenue that comes from paid ads on the “right side”. This paper examines this tradeoff,...

Regulators have alleged that digital giants (Alphabet, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon) have misused their market power to earn abnormal profits. Research that systematically documents whether technology firms earn abnormal profits is limited, arguably because (i) U.S. GAAP based...