Can a merger from duopoly to monopoly be detrimental for profits? This paper deals with this issue by focusing on the interaction between decreasing returns to labour (which imply firms’ convex production costs) and centralised unionisation in a differentiated duopoly model. It is pointed out...

We examine how subsidy policies to support child-rearing affect the fertility rate in a standard OLG small open economy with life uncertainty and involuntary bequests. It is shown the counter-intuitive result that increasing the child grant may actually reduce the long-run fertility rate.

This paper analyses the effects of a downstream merger in a differentiated duopoly under price competition and firm-specific unions. In contrast with the acquired wisdom, we show that a downstream merger may increase overall welfare when products are sufficienly substitutes and unions are...

We extend the two-period-lived-agent overlapping generations model with endogenous fertility and demand for money to understand whether and how the introduction of a money sector modifies what we have so far learned about fertility behaviours. It is shown that the existence of money may tend to...

We analyse the dynamics of a banking duopoly game with heterogeneous players (as regards the type of expectations’ formation), to investigate the effects of the capital requirements introduced by international accords (Basel-I in 1988 and more recently Basel-II and Basel-III), in the context...

In this paper, we aim at investigating if the conventional wisdom, that an increase of competition linked to a decrease in the degree of product differentiation always reduces firms’ profits, remains true in a unionized duopoly model with labour decreasing returns. In this context, mixed...

Motivated by the increasing literature on endogenous preferences, this paper investigates the implications of the introduction of habit and aspiration formation when labour supply is endogenous, in an OLG small open economy. In contrast with models with exogenous labour supply where aspirations...

In this paper we investigate the effects of two popular labour market institutions – namely, Monopoly Union (MU) and Efficient Bargaining (EB) – in a Cournot duopoly, in particular as regards the issue of the bargaining agenda. We show that, while when EB and Right-to- Manage arrangements...

Can a merger from duopoly to monopoly be detrimental for profits? This paper deals with this issue by focusing on the interaction between decreasing returns to labour (which imply firms’ convex costs) and centralised unionisation. Firstly, it is highlighted that a wage “non-rigidity”...

The present study analyses the effects of an increase in the share of crossownership in a Cournot duopoly with firm-specific monopolistic unions. Since the cross-participation at ownership level implies a lower degree of competition, then in a duopoly without unions, as expected, consumer...