The European Commission has launched the Regulation Proposal on a Common European Sales Law as an optional instrument for European firms and consumers. Several critical opinions have been raised against the optional nature, characterizing it as an instrument for social dumping (i. e. lowering...

In 2010, Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission, promoted a new strategy in the field of contract law that ended in late 2011 with the approval of the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Common European Sales Law. This paper briefly...

How much information does an auctioneer want bidders to have in a private value environment? We address this question using a novel approach to ordering information structures based on the property that in private value settings more information leads to a more disperse distribution of buyers’...

This paper analyzes the current trend towards firms’ self-regulation as opposed to the formal regulation of a negative externality. Firms respond to increasing activism in the market(conscious consumers that take into account the external effects of their purchase) by providing more socially...

This paper analyzes the interaction between the market of premium contents and the next generation network industry. We assume structural separation between the network and service operators (platforms) and the comparative advantage of the service operators depends on the access to premium...

By using general information structures and precision criteria based on the dispersion of conditional expectations, we study how oligopolists’ information acquisition decisions may change the effects of information sharing on the consumer surplus. Sharing information about individual cost...

This paper reviews the Spanish situation regarding Next Generation Networks (NGNs) and analyzes some public initiatives undertaken by regional governments. The paper focuses on “Xarxa Oberta”, a public-private project to deploy NGNs in Catalonia that may be especially attractive for...

Many of the attributes that make a good "socially responsible" are credence attributes that cannot be learned by consumers either through search or experience. Consumers aggregate information about them from several channels (media, advertisement, NGOs, etc.). Since these sources may send...