In times of increasing oil prices and a weak dollar, European companies that focus their business on the US market may find themselves in a weak position. While many businesses can hedge this kind of risk by relocating production to the US, or employing financial remedies, these strategies may...

Recent theoretical work has shown that the incidence of ad valorem and specific taxes may differ and each may be over or under-shifted onto consumers in the presence of imperfect competition. Empirical comparison of the price effects of the two taxes is limited. There are no previous estimates...

Recent theoretical work has shown that the incidence of ad valorem and specific taxes may differ and each may be over or under-shifted onto consumers in the presence of imperfect competition. These results are used to derive a method of estimating market power and conduct. An application is made...

By the 2008 Pricing of Pasta decision the Italian Competition Authority (ICA) condemned 26 pasta makers and two industry associations for carrying out price-fixing practices in the market for durum semolina pasta. In order to establish the cartel, the ICA relied on economic evidence indicating...

In this paper, we offer a hybrid approach to merger simulation in which we allow rather extensive pre-testing to suggest the ‘correct', or most desirable, form for the underlying demand curves. Our application is the merger between the large mobile telephone companies Cingular and AT&T...

Experience goods are those where the utility received is not known until consumed. The purchase can be viewed as a lottery. Consequently, risk preferences should affect willingness to pay and the price. Data from panels of experts rating cigars is used to test this assertion. For inexpensive...

This study contributes to the empirical industrial organization literature by deriving and estimating the empirical equation containing the parameter for bargaining power and an indicator of competition between suppliers. We specify a reduced form of the price equation, which is composed of the...

Divestitures have received little attention in ex-post evaluations of mergers. In partial remedy we simulate the effects of the Carlsberg-Pripps merger in the Swedish beer market and compare the predicted outcomes with those observed ex-post. There are no important price increases following the...

The milk addiction paradox refers to an empirical finding in which commodities that are typically considered to be non addictive, such as milk, appear instead to be addictive. This result seems more likely when there is persistence in consumption and when using aggregate data, and it suggests...

We show that a manager who has to pick a variety at a store without being able to choose the price of products on the horizontally differentiated market with positive fixed costs of offering each product will always under-provide variety. Using the information on sales and availability of vodka...