When Legislators award amnesties to ‘low-rank' criminals cooperating with the justice, top criminals may capture public officials to avoid being sanctioned. Optimal policies should anticipate this danger and fight it back by granting amnesties not only to low-rank criminals, but also to...

A buyer can either buy a good at a local monopolist or search for it in the market at a market price. The more intensely the buyer searches, the more likely he will find the good in the market, whereas if his search fails, he can still buy it from the local monopolist. We show that a buyer with...

Entrants often need to make considerable sunk investments whose returns are highlyuncertain. The option to exit the market if returns are low helps to reduce investment risksand can be an important impetus to investment. We examine the interaction between exitpolicy and up-front investment by...

This paper focuses on industries that require intensive investment to compete and innovate well before demand materialises (or fails to do so). In these industries, the existence of exit barriers may cause firms to become “zombies” ex post and result in significant underinvestment ex ante....

In this paper, we examine how the introduction of network externalities impact an open and vertically integrated platform's post-merger contractual relationship with third-party sellers distributing through its marketplace. Regardless of whether the platform uses linear contracts or two-part...

We study the competitive effects of a vertical merger in a digital industry where an integrated incumbent (closed ecosystem) competes with an open ecosystem formed by an upstream supplier (ecosystem gatekeeper) and two downstream retailers selling differentiated products. Absent innovation, the...

We characterize and compare the private and social incentives to collect consumer data by a vertically-integrated online intermediary who competes with third-party sellers listed on its platform and is required by regulation to share with rivals all the information it gathers. With linear...