Agricultural cooperatives have often been promoted as a way to increase their market power and to obtain stability of profit against uncertainty. This paper estimates the firm-level markups and markup volatility to identify the countervailing market power of cooperatives in the Italian fruits...

In this contribution, we present a novel instrument to control for investment opportunities in studying the investment-cash-flow sensitivity. More in particular we introduce the book value of R&D. We argue this instrument has advantages over other theories of investment, especially when...

This paper analyzes the relationship between state aid and firm performance in terms of productivity growth. To this end, we use all European state aid cases that were granted (either to an individual firm or a group of firms under the form of a scheme) in manufacturing between 2003 and 2011....

This article examines the collusive potential of first refusal contracts, which are contracts that grant one party, the buyer, a right of first refusal on the output of another party, the seller. When two parties enter into this type of contract, the seller is obligated to offer any output she...

Abstract Existing models of two-sided markets explain why platforms charge different prices between buyers and sellers. Generally, the platform will subsidize participation on a side of the market the higher is that side’s positive cross-side externality to users on the other side of the...