This paper introduces an alternative to the lobbying literature's standard assumption that money buys policies. Our model - in which influence-seeking requires both money to buy access and managerial time to utilize access - offers three significant benefits. First, it counters criticism that...

The purpose of this article is to analyze how the presence of a competitive fringe, composed by price taker firms, can affect the sustainability of collusive equilibria. Our starting point is that there exists a diffused misunderstanding about its strategical role as collusive minus factor. We...

This paper studies the influence of environmental policies on environmental quality, domestic firms, and welfare. Point of departure is Porter's hypothesis that unilateral environmental regulation may enhance the competitiveness of domestic firms. This hypothesis has recently received...

Präferenzen für Gütervielfalt und hieraus resultierende heterogene Preisbildung auf unvollkommenen Gütermärkten werden in empirischen Produktivitätsuntersuchungen bislang nur unzureichend berücksichtigt. Der vorliegende Beitrag möchte zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke beitragen: Er...

Tying arrangements recently have been a major and contentious issue in many high profile antitrust cases in the US and Europe. Examples include the Microsoft case, the Visa and MasterCard case, and the proposed GE/Honeywell merger to name a few. This paper conducts a selective review of the...

It is commonly argued that labor market institutions such as employment protection worsen an economy?s performance and particularly so, if product markets become more competitive. Empirical evidence, however, has difficulties to detect a robust negative correlation between employment protection...

We analyze the optimal choice of risk in a two-stage tournament game between two players that have different concave utility functions. At the first stage, both players simultaneously choose risk. At the second stage, both observe overall risk and simultaneously decide on effort or investment....

This paper deals with innovative activities of firms, the resulting market success as well as the interdependencies between both. In a first theoretical part, different cases of those interdependencies are investigated by the way of a simple model based on replicator dynamics. It is shown that...

We study how harmonization of corporate tax systems affects the stability of international cartels. We show that tax base harmonization reinforces collusive agreements, while harmonization of corporate tax rates may destabilize or stabilize cartels. We also find that bilateral and full...

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...