There is widespread evidence that geographical borders reduce trade. This paper presents a theoretical model capable of providing a succinct comparison of three broad forms of trade barriers involving i) trade costs, ii) localized tastes, and iii) information frictions. Despite being...

In many markets, firms offering low-quality goods are more prominent than firms offering high-quality goods. Then, consumers are perfectly informed about the good of the prominent low-quality firm but incur search costs to bring the high-quality good of a competitor to mind. We analyze under...

This paper analyzes price competition in the German motor insurance market since 1994 and looks for evidence to back up a claim frequently found in the trade literature—that there have been two recent price wars in this industry, the first in 1996–1999, the second in 2005–2006. In a first...

On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price,specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, andform their own profit-aspiration for each element of their conjecture. Weformally define the concepts of satisficing and prior-free optimality...

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...

We show the incentive for divisionalization by a monopolist producer. Incontrast to the previous literature, where divisionalization occurs for product marketadvantage, we show that divisionalization occurs if it provides strategic advantage inthe labor market. With unionized labor market, we...

We analyse firms' incentives to provide two-way compatibility between two network goodswith different intrinsic qualities. We study how the relative importance of verticaldifferentiation with respect to the network effect influences the price competition as well as thecompatibility choice. The...

This paper considers the effects of entry in the final goods market when the input market is imperfectly competitive. We show that entry of a new firm may increase profit of the incumbent if the technology of the entrant is sufficiently inferior to that of the incumbent...

This paper shows that if number of firms is determined endogenously, Cournot competition generates higher welfare compared to Bertrand competition when products are sufficiently differentiated. If products are close substitutes, welfare is higher under Bertrand competition. We show that the...

Seit einigen Jahren steigt der Marktanteil von Handelsmarken (‚private labels‘)in der Konsumgüterbranche kontinuierlich an. Diese Entwicklungwird begleitet durch einen nach wie vor sehr ausgeprägten Preiswettbewerbim Einzelhandel.Vordergründig könnte vermutet werden, dass die zunehmende...