The aim of this paper is to investigate the welfare effect of privatization in oligopoly when the government takes into account the distortionary effect of raising funds by taxation (shadow cost of public funds). We analyze the impact of the change in ownership not only on the objective function...

The recent ascent of right-wing populist movements in many countries has rekindled interest in understanding the causes of the rise of Fascism in inter-war years. In this paper, we argue that there was a strong link between the surge of support for the Socialist Party after World War I (WWI) and...

There is a general presumption that competition is a good thing. In this paper we show that competition in the insurance markets can be bad when there is adverse selection. Using the dual theory of choice under risk, we are able to fully characterize both the competitive and the monopoly market...

Higher electoral competition reinforces the position of special interest groups, which can endorse politicians in exchange for the support of specific policies. This paper formalizes this intuition and test it on Italian electoral data, using the 1991 electoral reform as an exogenous source of...

In this paper, we present a model of endogenous vertical integration and horizontal differentiation. Thereexists two output brands and two versions of the input. The only mean for output differentiation is the inputversion used in output production. Firms may choose to vertically integrate to...

We propose a new dynamic model for volatility and dependence in high dimensions, that allows for departuresfrom the normal distribution, both in the marginals and in the dependence. The dependence is modeled with adynamic canonical vine copula, which can be decomposed into a cascade of bivariate...

In a setting of R&D co-opetition we study, by using an all-pay auction approach, howcollaboration affects strategic decisions during a patent contest, and how the latter influences thepossible collaboration network structures the firms can hope to form. The all pay auctionapproach allows us to...

We study the impact of transfer pricing rules on sales prices, firms’ organizational structure, andconsumers’ utility within a two-country monopolistic competition model featuring source-basedprofit taxes that differ across countries. Firms can either become multinationals, i.e., they serve...

We define a two-variant model of product differentiation which, depending on the number of consumersprefering one variant to the other, provides equilibrium prices reflecting the natural valuation of thesevariants by the market....

We show in a simple model of entry with sunk cost, that a regulator prefers limiting the output, orcapacity, of the incumbent firm rather than imposing a “Minimum Quality Standard” in order tohelp the entrant to provide high quality. As a by-product, our analysis makes a contribution to...