We analyze R&D collaboration networks in industries where firms are competitors in the product market. Firms' benefits from collaborations arise by sharing knowledge about a cost-reducing technology. By forming collaborations, however, firms also change their own competitive position in the...

Economists traditionally tackle normative problems by computing optimal policy, i.e. the one that maximizes a social welfare function. In practice, however, a succession of marginal changes to a limited number of policy instruments are implemented, until no further improvement is feasible. I...

In capacity-then-price-setting games, soft capacity constraints are planned sales amounts where producing above capacity is possible but more costly. While the subgame perfect equilibrium predicts equal prices, experimental evidence often reveals price discrepancies. This failure to coordinate...

The Italian civil war and the Nazi occupation of Italy occurred at a critical juncture, just before the birth of a new democracy and when, for the first time in a generation, Italians were choosing political affiliations and forming political identities. In this paper we study how these...

This study focuses on a well-known but yet elusive concept: (technological) lock-in. We summarize what is known about the nature of lock-in and offer a critical view on history- dependent processes based on recent contributions to the literature. We discuss if lock-ins are really inescapable,...

This paper examines the determinants of sector-specific regulation imposed on broadband markets related both to efficiency objectives of regulators and to those of narrowly defined interest groups. We test hypotheses derived from the normative and positive theoretical literature employing recent...