Increasing environmental awareness may affect the pleasure of consuming a good for which an environment friendly substitute is available. In this paper, we investigate the market implication of product differentiation when customers are concerned about environmental aspects of the good. We use...

In many markets governments set minimum quality standards while some sellers choose to compete on the basis of quality by exceeding them. Such ‘high-quality’ strategies often win public acclaim, especially when ‘environmental friendliness’ is the dimension along which firms are...

Analysing data on values and unit values of bilateral trade flows at a very detailed level (some 10,000 product items), we examine the nature of intra-EC trade over the period 1980-94, identify its general determinants and then estimate the specific impact of the Single European Market...

This paper reviews the scientific contributions of Paul Krugman to the study of international trade, on the occasion of his receipt of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. A simplified exposition is presented of some of his principal findings, including: the effects of trade on firm scale...

This paper shows that an advertising ban is more likely to increase – rather than decrease – total consumption when advertising does not bring about a large expansion of market demand at given prices and when it increases product differentiation (thus allowing firms to command higher...

We study informative advertising within a random-utility, non-localized competition model of product differentiation. In a symmetric equilibrium, advertisement is sub-optimal when product differentiation is small, and excessive otherwise. Increasing the number of firms may increase or decrease...

We explore the joint determination of product differentiation strategy and corporate leverage in a setting where (i) product differentiation is valued by customers; (ii) debt is necessary to discipline managers; and (iii) liquidation is costly for customers, in particular, when products are...

We study a procurement auction recently analysed by Gal-Or et al. (2007). In this auction game the buyer ranks different bids on the basis of both the prices submitted and the quality of each bidder that is her private information. We emphasise the similarity between this model and existing...

The Scottish red meat industry is a major part of the Scottish agricultural economy and is known for producing high quality beef and lamb. Beef and lamb which are produced and processed in Scotland and according to a quality assured production specification, carry the EU ‘Protected...

We analyze the development of the Austrian, Dutch, German, Italian and Swedish trade structures (SITC two-digit levels) with Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. We revealed that the increase of the intra-industry trade was a major feature of the trade...