Platforms acting as sales channels for producers often charge users for access, via a subscription fee or a markup on hardware. We compare two common forms of vertical pricing agreement that platforms use with sellers: per-­unit and proportional fees. In particular, we analyze the critical role...

When Apple entered the ebook market, prices rose. A recent court decision found Apple guilty of colluding with publishers, blaming the price hike, in part, on agency agreements and prohibiting their use. Building a model to compare these with traditional wholesale agreements, we identify a...

With recent advances in technology, more and more of the world is being connected to the internet, at progressively faster speeds. Piggy-backing on this increasing penetration are a swarm of new products and services, who seek to create value by playing intermediary – connecting different...

The “invisible hand” has become an icon for an economic philosophy that assumes a laissez-faire governmental policy will result in optimal social and financial outcomes as market forces will drive a socially efficient equilibrium. This approach is in tension with another philosophy that...

Over the past thirty years, the income gap between capital and labour has widened, a shift accompanied by an increase in dominant firms’ market power. To understand the underlying causes, our study integrates imperfect competition in both product and labour markets, revealing how different...

In imperfectly competitive markets, a producer-employer firm can be considered monopolist-monopsonist, facing downward sloping residual demand for product and upward sloping residual supply for labour. Firms can thereby exercise both product price markup and wage markdown powers. To study market...

"In the last two decades, the world has seen the proliferation of effective leniency programs, ever-increasing sanctions for cartel offenses, and a growing global movement to hold individuals criminally accountable," a top antitrust official recently observed. Statistics from several of the...

This paper investigates the vertical relations in the Italian retail gasoline industry to study their effects on the retail price. The retailer, in presence of a quantity-decreasing unit discount scheme on the gasoline purchased, has to decide whether to follow the retail price recommended by...

In this paper, I completely characterize the optimal policy against price-fixings when the agency in charge of competition policy lacks information about the production cost of an industry. I consider two types of punishment. The first one consists in imposing a fine proportional to the total...

This article investigates the relationship between income inequality and firms' locations and product choices. Using detailed information on income at a regionally disaggregated level and individual data on Austrian restaurants, we demonstrate that firm conduct crucially depends on the...