Why do retailing firms operate several chains of stores, each of which is in apparent competition with the others? This paper demonstrates that by increasing the number of, apparently independent, stores it controls, a firm can discourage consumer search and increase its market power. It is also...

Textbooks present the three 'degrees' of price discrimination as a sequence of independent pricing methods and consequently provide inadequate insight as to when a firm might adopt a particular pricing strategy. The paper describes a taxonomy of the various mechanisms of price discrimination,...

Quality is defined as being skewed when the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between quantity and quality differs from the marginal rate of transformation (MRT). This definition is used to assess the balance of quality and quantity in each variety of good produced by a monopolist using...