This paper evaluates the recent literature claiming that the US economy has generally become less competitive causing the US economy to perform poorly and that lax antitrust policy is one important reason for the decline in economic performance. Although there certainly are empirical facts...

Using the overcharge estimates for 406 cartel episodes, I evaluate the impact of cartel characteristics and market environment on the size of the overcharges imposed by cartels in different geographic markets and during six antitrust law regimes starting from the 18th century. I find that the...

Using the data on 238 cartelized markets we evaluate econometrically the impact of cartel characteristics as well the market and legal environment of cartel operation on cartel stability. The latter is measured as the expected number of repeated attempts to form a cartel in the same product...

This paper investigates empirically whether owner motivations are consistent with neoclassical models of profit maximisation. Contrary to the neoclassical model, in some markets owners gain private benefits from supplying products with certain characteristics. To consider this issue, a full...

When a panel carries out a brainstorming session on an issue or research question, it is often difficult to apply text summarization to the brainstorming notes. This either gives the power of editing conclusions to the panel leader, which may favor some ideas, and/or slows down considerably the...

Considerable evidence demonstrates that significant dispersion exists in the prices charged for seemingly homogeneous goods. This paper adopts a simple, flexible equilibrium model of search to investigate the way the market structure influences price dispersion. Using the noisy search approach,...

Most contracts that individuals enter into are not written from scratch; rather, they depend upon forms and terms that have been successful in the past. In this paper, we study the structure of form construction contracts published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We show that...

The economic nature of agricultural cooperatives is explained by means of a logical continuation of the organizational economics rationale for family farms. The traditional explanations of the importance of family farms is discussed, and embedded in a broader framework which considers their...

The principal aim of this paper is to select a contractor who offers the best value for money which will nearly always involve a process of competitive tendering. The final decision as to which contractor offers the best value for money will be determined by the factors like quality/price...

Previous literature finds that larger downstream markets fuel the innovation of new technologies by incentivizing firms to spend more on R&D. Our evidence shows that larger markets also increase the extent of licensing-based cooperation between upstream innovators and downstream commercializers....