We analyze a monopolist who offers different variants of a possibly dangerous product to heterogeneous customers. Product variants are distinguished by different safety attributes. Customers choose product usage which co- determines expected harm. We find that, even with customers being...

We investigate patterns in common ownership networks between firms that are active in the US pharmaceutical industry for the period 2004-2014. Our main findings are that "brand firms" - i.e. firms that have R&D capabilities and launch new drugs - exhibit relatively dense common ownership...

A central motivating factor for studying price markups is their effect on consumer welfare. Reported estimates of (firm-level) price markups in the literature, however, are often focused on industry or cross-country comparisons. These treat different industries equally rather than based on how...

The literature on wage bargaining so far mainly argues that unemployment benefits are relevant outside options for employees. This paper demonstrates that also a change in outside wage options drives wages in continuing jobs. The authors use the natural experiment of a crafts reform that reduces...

This article studies the effects of consumer information on the intensity of competition. In a two dimensional duopoly model of horizontal product differentiation, firms use consumer information to price discriminate. I contrast a full privacy and a no privacy benchmark with intermediate regimes...

We study the collusive efficacy of competition clauses (CC) such as the meeting competition clause (MCC) and the beating competition clauses (BCC) in a general framework. In contrast to previous theoretical studies, we allow for repeated interaction among the retailers and heterogeneity in their...

In Germany, the productivity of professional services, a sector dominated by micro and small firms, declined by 40 percent between 1995 and 2014. This productivity decline also holds true for professional services in other European countries. Using a German firm-level dataset of 700,000...

A positiv relationship between firm size and product diversification is a long-standing stylized fact. However, so far there is no appropriate theoretical model to explain the underlying forces of this oberservation. This paper analyzes an oligopoly model with asymmetric multiproduct firms,...