An welchen Kriterien sollte sich die Entscheidung über die bestmögliche Aufgabenverteilung zwischen staatlichen Stellen und privaten Akteuren bezüglich Finanzierung, Erstellung und Betrieb öffentlicher Infrastruktureinrichtungen orientieren? Während die unmittelbare Erstellung der...

Consider a market with switching costs that is initially served by a monopolistic incumbent. How can a competitor successfully enter this market? We show that an offer to undercut the incumbent by a fixed margin serves this purpose. This strategy dominates traditional entry where the entrant...

The related phenomena of learning curve and network effects are quite common in oligopolistic markets. In this context the present paper discusses the incentives of a technological leader to share its exclusive technology with potential competitors. An alliance may be preferable because partner...

In his book on 'Market Microstructure' Spulber presented some strange results with respect to the impact of the substitutability parameter in an intermediation model with differentiated products and inputs. Intuitively, effects in the product and the input market should be similar: if firms...

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyze how his decision...

Consider a market with switching costs that is initially served by a monopolistic incumbent. How can a competitor successfully enter this market? We show that an offer to undercut the incumbent by a fixed margin serves this purpose. This strategy dominates traditional entry where the entrant...

Oil price indexing is a peculiar feature of the natural gas markets in Germany and other European countries. It is closely linked to the existence of local monopolies (at least de facto) and of the so called "take-or-pay" (TOP) contracts. After discussing the relation between these features and...

Electronic coordination links markets at different locations that have initially been (partially) separated by transport costs. Rising competitive pressure should in turn affect incentives to differentiate products. In this paper investment decisions concerning transport cost reduction and...