We examine the role of price transparency in consumer preferences and demand. We assemble a detailed dataset on the driving school industry in Portugal to quantify how firms present the price of the course of instruction, and its individual components, to potential students. Our unique data...

In this paper, we take a first step toward exploring empirically the product assortment strategies of oligopolistic firms. Our starting point is a discrete-choice demand model for differentiated products. We incorporate the demand model into an equilibrium supply model, in which firms compete by...

This paper analyses the link between the high-skilled employment share and the level of investment in information technology (IT) in the service production process. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel data set for 933 West German firms over the period 1994-1996. To account for firms...

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) controls the purchase and sale of alcoholic beverages across the state and is legally mandated to charge a uniform 30% mark-up on all products. This paper investigates the welfare implications of this uniform markup. We show that consumption patterns...

Nonprofits are increasingly present in industries with a large for-profit sector, raising questions about their competitive advantage afforded by the nonprofit tax exemption. We estimate an equilibrium model of market structure for recreation/fitness centers to assess whether nonprofit and...

Many firms have introduced internet-based customer self-service applications, such as online payments or brokerage services. Despite high initial signup rates, not all customers actually shift their dealings online. We investigate whether the multi-stage nature of the adoption process (an...

Local telecommunications competition was an important goal of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. We evaluate the consumer welfare effects of entry into residential local telephone service in New York State using household-level data from September 1999 to March 2003. We address the prevalence of...

We test the effect of entry on the tariff choices of incumbent cellular firms. We relate the change in the breadth of calling plans between 1996, when incumbents enjoyed a duopoly market, and 1998, when incumbents faced increased competition from personal communications services (PCS) firms....

This paperanalyses the link between human capitaland information technology (IT) in the service production process. The analysis is based on 1994 cross-sectional data for 1929 German. Firms drawn from the first wave of the Mannheim Service Innovation Panel (MIP-S). Factor demand functions are...

This paper analyses the link between the high-skilled employment share and the level of investment in information technology (IT) in the service production process. The analysis is based on an unbalanced panel data set for 933 West German firms over the period 1994-1996. To account for firms...