The imposition of universal coverage and uniform pricing constraints, as part of the universalservice obligations, makes the universal service provider less aggressive in the price game when itcompetes with a firm that does not cover the whole set of markets (Valletti et al., 2002). In...

Especially in many online markets, consumers can readily observe prices, but may need to further inspect products to assess their suitability. We study the effects of product differentiation and search costs on competition and market outcomes in a tractable model of price-directed consumer...

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....

This paper analyses price competition under product differentiation when goods are defined ina two dimensional characteristic space, and consumers do not know which firm sells whichquality. Equilibrium prices consist of two additive terms, which balance consumers' relativevaluation of goods'...

Minimum quality standards (MQS) constitute an important regulatory tool that can be used to raise product qualities, to benefit consumers and to increase market participation. One of the main assumptions in the existing literature is that firms must comply with standards. Nevertheless, in many...