A freshman student in economics or a Nobel prize-winning macroeconomist who has lately stumbled across a journal or two in industrial organization economics may be somewhat perplexed or confused by many references to two-sided markets. Surely, is it not the case that all markets have two sides,...

The academic literature on loyalty discounts and exclusive dealing demonstrates that the welfare effects of these practices are ambiguous and that market details determine the direction of the effect. Assaf Eilat, Jith Jayaratne, Janusz Ordover (Compass Lexecon) & Greg Shaffer (University of...

We consider a two-period model with two sellers and one buyer in which the efficient outcome calls for the buyer to purchase one unit from each seller in each period. We show that when the buyer's valuations between periods are linked by switching costs and at least one seller is financially...

The Polish government is considering methods of the privatizing and possible restructuring of the Polish National Railway, PKP, that would improve the efficiency of the railroad while creating some form of competition in order to prevent monopoly pricing. Traditional intramodal competition is...