This paper demonstrates that the Most-Favoured-Customer (MFC) clause identified in the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) Report of Foreign Package Holidays behaves not like an MFC but rather as if it was a variant of a so far unstudied price matching guarantee. This provides a clearer...

In this paper, a domestic and a foreign firm compete as Cournot duopolists in the domestic market. The foreign firm has incomplete information about the costs of the domestic firm, but the domestic government and the domestic firm are completely informed. It is shown that the domestic government...

UK Local Authorities purchase care home places on behalf of a large group of people following an assessment of their ability to meet the care home fee from their income and wealth. All other buyers of care home services are atomistic and the care home market is characterised by a large number of...

The past and current reluctance of firms and individuals to use private enforcement suggests that there are limited incentives for self-help. The key contribution of private enforcement to overall deterrence derives from cases which would not otherwise be brought, not simply because of resource...

The focus of this paper is the effect of merger proposals on the expected profitability of the bidder and the target. The authors illustrate how an unsuccessful bid may increase the profitability of the target but reduce the profitability of the bidding firm, relative to the profitability of the...

We show that price-matching guarantees can facilitate monopoly pricing only if firms automatically match prices. If consumers must instead request refunds (thereby incurring hassle costs), we find that any increase in equilibrium prices due to firms' price-matching policies will be small; often,...

Imperfectly competitive product markets cannot be informationally efficient as private information has strategic implications interfering with price adjustment. This is illustrated in a duopoly model with sequential price setting where private information either leads to prices not being...