Customer switching costs can limit the opportunities for new entry in some markets. Incumbent firms may be able to reduce these switching costs, but have no incentive to do so without regulatory intervention. For example, in telecommunications, incumbent firms can provide customers with number...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting sticky consumers who are exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established firms are challenged by new...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established rms are...

This paper studies the market microstructure of pre-industrial Europe. In particular we investigate the institution of the broker in markets and fairs, and develop a unique data set of approximately 1100 sets of brokerage rules in 42 merchant towns in Central and Western Europe from the late...

It is argued that liquidity risk caused by high-frequency trading in the institutional FX market is a more important factor than volatility risk. For mitigating the former, it is suggested that multi-dealer FX platforms introduce the market maker status (MMS). Those traders that have MMS would...

Initial applications of prediction markets (PMs) indicate they provide good forecasting instruments in many settings, such as elections, the box office, or product sales. One particular characteristic of these “first-generation” (G1) PMs is that they link the payoff value of a stock's share...

In global financial centers, short-term market rates are effectively determined in the pledged collateral market, where banks and other financial institutions exchange collateral (such as bonds and equities) for money. Furthermore, the use of long-dated securities as collateral for short...

We endogenize the trade mechanism in a search economy with many homogenous sellers and many heterogenous buyers of unobservable type. We study how heterogeneity and the traders' continuation values - which are endogenous - influence the sellers' choice of trade mechanism. Sellers trade off the...

We study competition among market designers who create new trading platforms, when boundedly rational traders learn to select among them. We ask whether efficient platforms, leading to market - clearing trading outcomes, will dominate the market in the long run. If several market designers are...