On many online auction sites it is now possible for a seller to augment his auction with a maximum or buy-out price. The use of this instrument has been justified in 'one-shot' auctions by appeal to impatience or risk aversion. Here we o.er additional justification by observing that trading on...

This paper analyses collusive behaviour at auctions within the general symmetric model where signals are affiliated. A mechanism which allows information sharing is proposed, and first and second price collusive auction mechanisms (knock-out auctions) from the literature on bid rigging within...

Interest groups can influence political decisions in two distinct ways: by offering contributions to political actors and by providing them with relevant information that is favorable for the group. We analyze the conditions under which interest groups are more inclined to use one or the other...

Determining the research and development (R&D) boundaries of the firm as the choice between internal, collaborative and external technology acquisition has since long been a major challenge for firms to secure a continuous stream of innovative products or processes. While research on R&D...

This paper analyzes cooperation between sovereign national authorities in the supervision and regulation of a multinational bank. We take a political economy approach to regulation and assume that supervisors maximize the welfare of their own country. The communication between the supervisors is...

This paper uses data on the population of German magazines for the period 1973 to 2004 to show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, there is little evidence for magazine readers disliking advertising. Many magazines in fact have readers who appreciate advertising. The degree of appreciation...

The paper considers the owners of the firms as normal investors who want to optimise the return from their investments in accordance with their wealth constraint and the risk of their investment in the firm. The paper tests this theory on a representative sample of Danish companies including...

We explore the effects of switching costs on the subgame perfect quality decisions of oligopolists with repeated price competition. We establish a strong strategic quality premium. We show that competition for the establishment of customer relationships will eliminate low-quality firms in period...

We consider a single period model where a monopolist introduces a product of uncertain quality. Before pricing and informative advertising decisions take place, the producer observes the true quality of the good while consumers receive an independent signal which is correlated with the true...

Recent policy initiatives within the harmonization of European company laws have promoted a so-called “principle of proportionality” through proposals that regulate mechanisms opposing a proportional distribution of ownership and control. We scrutinize the foundation for these initiatives by...