This paper presents a model in which a monopoly platform not only operates a marketplace intermediating direct transactions between consumers and third-party sellers, but also sells its first-party products at the marketplace, which is designated herein as platform encroachment. When...

Janssen and Rasmusen (2002) show that a Bertrand model with an uncertain number of firms has only one symmetric equilibrium, and profits in that equilibrium fit the empirical data in Bresnahan and Reiss (1991). However, unless its equilibrium is unique, Janssen and Rasmusen's model cannot be...

We empirically test the hypothesis that the discounts offered by firms to consumers who purchase tickets in advance increase with the intensity of competition. We develop a new measure of competition for which we use the proximity (in departure time) of a given flight to its competitors to infer...

In 2004, the US Supreme Court denied certiorari in LePage's, Inc. v. 3M. The decision ended a hotly contested litigation, but it fueled the controversy and debate over the competitive effects of bundled rebates and discounts. The Supreme Court's decision followed the recommendations of the US...

In this paper, we tackle the dilemma of pruning versus proliferation in a vertically differentiated oligopoly under the assumption that some firms collude and control both the range of variants for sale and their corresponding prices, likewise a multiproduct firm. We analyse whether pruning...

In Japan, newspapers enjoy a special exemption from antimonopoly prohibitions against resale price maintenance (suppliers’ stipulations that bar downstream firms from price discounting), but are each required to set uniform prices throughout Japan. In fact, the newspapers have rarely changed...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of a vertical merger that raises rivals costs when downstream competition is à la Cournot between firms with constant asymmetric marginal costs. The main result is that such a vertical merger can nevertheless improve welfare if it involves a...

This paper studies a general model of price competition among platforms offering differentiated services in multi-sided markets. We incorporate a general form of both within-side and cross-side externalities into a discrete choice model of random utility maximization by consumers on each side of...

This paper studies a general model of price competition among platforms offering differentiated services in multi-sided markets. We incorporate a general form of both within-side and cross-side externalities into a discrete choice model of random utility maximization by consumers on each side of...

We investigate mergers in markets where quality differences between products are central and firms may reposition their product lines by adding or removing products of different qualities following a merger. Such mergers are materially different from those studied in the existing literature....