Production costs play a crucial role in competition policy and price regulation. A shared purpose of both policies is to keep prices close to production costs to the benefit of the consumers and of the society as a whole. The problem is that prices are per product and costs are per firm. So, the...

This is one of a bundle of essays on the economics of antitrust. It is about the way the concept of efficiency is dealt with in competition analysis and the welfare standard of antitrust. I pay particular attention to Pareto efficiency, what it stands for and what it does not stand for, and its...

Collusion, particularly collusion is in the form of hardcore cartel behavior, is the worst antitrust offense of all. People engaging in such conduct should be punished severely. That is the consensus among antitrust officials. I argue against, that collusion is not that bad as antitrust...

This brief note is a reply to the paper Two-sided Red Herrrings by Evans and Schmalensee (E&S), in which they denounce attempts by commentators in the American Express case to marginalize the findings of the literature on multi-sided platforms. In my view E&S are right in most of their...

In his article “Two-Sided Vs. Complementary Products” Filistrucchi explains in what respect two-sided platforms are different from firms producing complementary products, in spite of the similarity in pricing strategies. For him, the distinguishing feature of two-sided platforms is the...

In a recent article, Daljord, Sørgard, and Thomassen criticize Katz and Shapiro for applying the standard formula for critical loss to the case in which the price of only one product of the candidate market is increased. They argue that the standard formula does not hold in that case and...

Upward pricing pressure has recently become an important analytical tool in horizontal-merger assessment, where it is taken as a measure for the incentives of the merged firm to raise prices. I propose a comprehensive measure for pricing pressure, applicable to any off-equilibrium situation,...