This study has three main objectives. First, we develop a realistic framework for studying the incentives to differentiate broadcasting in free-to-air TV markets. Consumers are allowed to vary the amount of time spent in front of the television set depending on preferences over program types...

This paper first presents stylized evidence showing how the date of the introduction of competition policy is correlated with country size. Smaller countries tend to adopt competition policy later. We thereafter present a simple theoretical model with countries of different size and firms...

We examine the relation between rent control and prices of owner occupied housing in the presence of different qualities of housing. While a rent ceiling and the price of condominiums are substitutes if housing is undifferentiated, it is shown that this is not necessarily the case when housing...

Recently, the European Commission has decided to implement a simplified procedure in the context of vertical integration. If the combined market shares of the merging firms are less than 25 percent, upstream and downstream, the Commission will consider the merger harmless. The purpose of this...

This paper first presents stylised evidence showing how the date of the introduction of competition policy is correlated with country size. Smaller countries tend to adopt competition policy later. We thereafter present a simple theoretical model with countries of different size and firms...

In media markets, the value of advertisement exposure depends on circulation, and media consumers’ valuation is affected by advertising. This paper analyzes media market competition in a duopoly framework. There exist symmetric and asymmetric equilibria in terms of firm size. There is less...

This paper analyses the effects of mergers on price and welfare in markets facing congestion and derives conditions under which a merger is consumer welfare improving, even in the absence of marginal cost savings. In our context a merger basically has two effects. First, it obviously increases...

In this not we show that the results developed in Singh and Vives (1984) are sensitive to the duopoly assumtion (Rand Journal of Economics 15, 546-554). If there are more than two firms, prices may be higher under price competition than unde quantity competition. This will be the case if quality...

The purpose of this study is to analyse theoretically the implications of applying the procedure for market delineation used by competitions authorities in the EU and in the US. Specifically, we investigate the circumstances under which the procedure will lead to positive relation between actual...

Trademark dilution, whereby a firm associates its product with that of another firm and takes advantage of the goodwill created by that firm, is illegal in the EU and in the US. We investigate this regulation from a welfare perspective, considering short-term effects on profits and consumers’...