We consider the plant location decision of a multinational, which has the option to invest in a more or aless technologically advanced country. We find that in the absence of exporting by the local firms, themultinational will invest in the country lagging behind, unless the firms in that...

This paper studies how competition and vertical structure jointly determine generating capacities, retail prices, and welfare in the electricity industry. Analyzing a model in which demand is uncertain and retailers must commit to retail prices before they buy electricity in the wholesale...

Crowdfunding has mostly been used to finance very unique projects. Recently, however, companies have begun using it to finance more traditional products where they compete against other sellers of similar products. Major crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter and Indiegogo, as well as Amazon have...

We investigate the impact of consumer search and competition on pricing strategies in Germany’s electricity retail. We utilize a unique panel dataset on spatially varying search requests at major online price comparison websites to construct a direct measure of search intensity and combine...

Consumer boycotts often provide a disciplinary mechanism against firms deviating from established social norms. Such actions tend to be organized by people through reference groups with a social mission. The intensity of the group identity is, however, private information. Therefore, the...

Brands matter. In modern times, brands and brand management have become a central feature of the modern economy and a staple of business theory and business practice. Coca-Cola, Nike, Google, Disney, Apple, Microsoft, BMW, Marlboro, IBM, Kellogg’s, Louis-Vuitton, and Virgin are all large...

The law and economics literature on the tragedy of the anticommons suggests that producers of complementary goods should integrate themselves. Recent decisions by the antitrust authorities seem to indicate that there is tradeoff between the “tragedy” and the lack of competition which might...