This paper is the first to examine the welfare consequences of foreign competition in a mixed oligopoly set in a linear model of spatial price discrimination. It demonstrates that the entry of a foreign firm often lowers domestic welfare. This results because the public firm locates largely...

We show that partially privatizing a public firm alters underlying conjectures, in turn, changing the optimal degree of privatization. The consistent conjectures equilibrium (CCE) generates substantially greater optimal privatization than does any conjecture shared between the firms including...

Previous research examining mixed duopolies shows that the use of an optimal incentive contract for the public firm increases welfare and that privatization reduces welfare. We demonstrate that these results do not generalize to a mixed oligopoly with multiple private firms. We derive the...

This paper demonstrates that it can be optimal for innovators that also produce to license via a fixed fee rather than a royalty in a model of spatial price discrimination. This reversal of the typical result emerges when reduced willingness to pay by consumers limits the competitive location...

Using panel data, we demonstrate a 50% increase in research productivity following a dramatic increase in the piece rate paid for articles by a major Chinese University. The increased productivity comes exclusively from those who were already research active

This paper investigates the making of optimal regulatory standard in a game theoretical model. We demonstrate that the optimal regulatory standard is robust and irrelevant to interest group pressure under different market structures. Stated differently, the source of rulemaking outcome variation...

We explore the overlooked issue of how certain strategic-level, interindustry diversification options might increase consumer utility. Discussions of inter-industry diversification typically focus on producer synergies obtainable from economies of scope or from skill transfer across business...

This paper investigates the impact of trade liberalization on firm productivity by using both Chinese manufacturing firm-level data and highly disaggregated Chinese import data from 1998-2002. We construct a measure of firms' total factor productivity (TFP) by adopting an augmented Olley-Pakes...

Using a sample of apartment transactions during 2004-2006 in Chengdu, China, we investigate the impact of superstitions in the Chinese real estate market. Numerology forms an important component of Chinese superstitious lore, with the numbers 8 and 6 signifying good luck, and the number 4 bad...