We study a Hotelling framework in which customers first pay a monopoly platform to enter the market before deciding between two competing services on opposite ends of a Hotelling line. This setup is common when modeling competition in Internet content provision. We find that standard...

In a spatial competition setting there is usually a non-negative relationship between competition and quality. In this paper we offer a novel mechanism whereby competition leads to lower quality. This mechanism relies on two key assumptions, namely that the providers are motivated and...

In a spatial competition setting there is usually a non-negative relationship between competition and quality. In this paper we offer a novel mechanism whereby competition leads to lower quality. This mechanism relies on two key assumptions, namely that the providers are motivated and...

We study the effect of competition on quality in markets such as health care, long-term care and education, when providers choose both prices and quality in a setting of spatial competition. We offer a novel mechanism whereby competition leads to lower quality. This mechanism relies on two key...

The economics literature generally considers products as points in some characteristics space. With more products being flexible or self-customizable to some degree, it makes sense to model products with positive measure. I develop a model of firms which can offer interval-long 'fat' products in...

This paper generalizes the frequently used Hotelling model for two-sided markets in order to determine the equilibrium market shares. We show that advertisement levels depend neither on the media price nor on the location of the media firm. An increase in advertising revenues does not change...

We analyze the role of consumer expectations in a Hotelling model of price competition when products exhibit network effects. Expectations can be strong (stubborn), weak (price-sensitive) or partially stubborn (a mix of weak and strong). As a rule, the price-sensitivity of demand declines when...

Two firms choose locations (non-wage job characteristics) on the interval [0,1] prior to announcing wages at which they employ workers who are uniformly distributed; the (constant) marginal revenue products of workers may differ. Subgame perfect equilibria of the two-stage location-wage game are...

It is increasingly observable that competitors in different industries share customer data, which can be used for targeted pricing. We propose a modified Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity to analyze the incentives for such sharing and its ensuing welfare effects. We...