Theories of firm profitability make different predictions about the relative importance of firm, industry and time specific factors. We assess, empirically, the relevance of these effects over a sixteen year period in India, as a regime of control and regulation, pre 1985, gave way to partial...

The effects of a carbon price on U.S. industries are likely to change over time as firms and customers gradually adjust to new prices. The effects will also depend on offsetting policies to compensate losers and the number of countries implementing comparable policies. We examine the effects of...

This paper formulates a model embedding the key ideas from Ronald Coase’s famous essay on the theory of the firm in a simple competitive equilibrium setting with anarbitrary number of firms. The model studies the structure of production when transaction costs and diminishing returns to...

We construct company panel datasets for manufacturing firms in Belgium, France, Germany and the UK, covering the period 1978-89. These datasets are used to estimate a range of empirical investment equations, and to investigate the role played by financial factors in each country. A robust...

The 1992 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) MacSharry reforms reduced intervention prices for cereals and simultaneously introduced direct payments to producers. This paper, estimating Irish cereal producers risk attitudes and associated premiums, compares the level of the direct payment with...

We introduce endogenous leadership in a game between government and firms, in which the government has short-run commitment power only and firms choose when to invest. We show that firms that delay investment in the absence of government intervention have an incentive to invest early and...

The main objectives of this paper are: (i) to establish whether Irish dairy marketing cooperatives behaved "as if" they were profit maximisers over the period 1961 to 1987 and (ii) to determine the response of the sector to the imposition of the milk production quota in 1984. The theory of the...

The paper is concerned with the effects upon competition of most-favored-customer pricing policy. We consider a model where a multimarket incumbent firm faces a threat of entry in one of its two markets. We show that most-favored-customer clauses, or the commitment to uniform pricing, may change...

The relation between rationality and optimization have been widely discussed in the wake of Herbert Simon's work, with the common conclusion that the rationality concept does not imply the optimization principle. The paper is partly concerned with adding evidence for this view but its main, more...

We examine takeover strategies for a multiproduct firm operating in a horizontally differentiated market. We show why a strategic scheme for taking over competitors should obey a maximal market share connection principle. When trying to reinforce its market power, a multiproduct firm should try...