In spatial competition, public infrastructure plays a crucial role in determining product market outcomes. In our model, consideration of infrastructure’s impact on the product market drives the voting behavior of consumers in their dual role as voter/taxpayers. The spatial heterogeneity of...

We study welfare effects of horizontal mergers under a successive oligopoly model and find that downstream mergers can increase welfare if they reduce input prices. The lower input price shifts some input production from cost-inefficient upstream firms to cost-efficient ones. Also, the lower...

Platform sharing across manufacturers has recently become common practice in the automobile industry. Its important objective is to reduce procurement costs by taking advantage of the commonality of components, but this often reduces the degree of product differentiation. We investigate this...

We study welfare effects of horizontal mergers under a successive oligopoly model and find that downstream mergers can increase welfare if they reduce input prices. The lower input price shifts some input production from cost- inefficient upstream firms to cost-efficient ones. Also, the lower...

IZA DP No. 3132 Discrete Innovation, Continuous Improvement, and Competitive Pressure Arghya Ghosh Takao Kato Hodaka Morita DISCUSSION P APER SERIES Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor October 2007 Discrete Innovation, Continuous Improvement, and...