This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting sticky consumers who are exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established firms are challenged by new...

Fuel prices are commonly perceived to be excessively high, which regularly triggers political discussions about fuel price regulations. Consumers demand stricter fuel price regulations to provide transparency about the current price level and to protect them from sudden price fluctuations. Such...

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and empirical literature on the regulation of natural monopolies. It covers alternative definitions of natural monopoly, public interest regulatory goals, alternative regulatory institutions, price regulation with full...

An imperfectly-informed regulator needs to procure multiple units of some good (e.g., green energy, market liquidity, pollution reduction, land conservation) that can be produced with heterogeneous technologies at various costs. How should she optimally procure these units? Should she run...

A non-trivial fraction of people cannot afford to buy pharmaceutical products at unregulated market prices. This paper analyses the public insurance of a patent-protected pharmaceutical product in terms of price controls and socially optimal third-degree price discrimination. First, the paper...

The gas price shock has been a major contributor to inflation in Germany. In this context, Dullien and Weber (2022a, b, c) proposed a two-tier pricing scheme for natural gas in the spring of 2022 that lowers the price for a base quota through a subsidy while maintaining high market prices on the...