By defining three targets as pillars of their environmental policy (20% cleaning, 20% greening, and 20% saving energy by 2020), European authorities are putting out noisy signals on what the actual objective is and how to achieve it. I show that, whereas the community-wide CO2 market (named...

Quantity discounts of all kinds — be it pure quantity discounts, bundled discounts, or market-share discounts — have raised considerable antitrust concerns. Unlike its U.S. counterpart, the European Commission (EC) has adopted a fairly tough stance on such business practices, to...

This study investigates when a cartel that uses a sales quota allocation scheme monitors more frequently than it enforces; for example, monitoring of sales is done on a weekly basis but firms are only required to comply with sales quotas on a quarterly basis. In a simple three-period quantity...

Recent laboratory experiments support the popular view that the introduction of corporate leniency programs has significantly decreased cartel activity. We develop a classroom experiment that captures key features of leniency programs. Our treatments include an exploitable and a non-exploitable...

It is widely believed that fuel prices tend to rise swiftly when oil prices increase, but take longer to fall after oil prices decrease. This ¡°rockets and feathers¡± pattern could be due to tacit collusion at some level of the supply chain. We test the ¡°rockets and feathers¡±...

When large retailers merge, there is a concern that a sudden and marked increase in concentration will alter the intensity and nature of price competition to the detriment of consumers. This chapter considers just such a situation in regard to UK grocery retailing, which has witnessed steadily...

This chapter provides a comprehensive discussion of the deterrence properties of a competition policy regime. On the basis of the economic theory of law enforcement, we identify several factors that are likely to affect its degree of deterrence: (1) sanctions and damages; (2) financial and human...

One of the pressing issues in marketing is whether loyalty programs really enhance behavioral loyalty. Loyalty program members may have a much higher share-of-wallet at the firm with the loyalty program than non-members have, but this does not necessarily imply that loyalty programs are...

Frequent shopper programs are becoming ubiquitous in retailing. Retailers seem unsure however about whether these programs are leading to higher loyalty, or to higher profits. In this paper we analyze data from a U.S. supermarket chain that has used a number of frequent shopper rewards to...

This article focuses on the tactical problem of selecting delivery patterns according to which grocery stores are repetitively supplied with products from different order segments by retail-owned distribution centers. The research environment considered consists of logistics processes in DCs,...