This paper analyzes the effect of competition on a supermarket firm’s incentive to provide product quality. In the supermarket industry, product availability is an important measure of quality. Using U.S. consumer price index microdata to track inventory shortfalls, I find that stores facing...

If an intermediary offers sellers a platform to reach consumers, he may face the following hold-up problem: sellers suspect the intermediary will enter their respective product market as a merchant after they have sunk fixed costs of entry. Therefore, fearing that their investments cannot be...

This paper studies asymmetric price responses of individual firms, via daily retail prices of almost all gasoline stations in the Netherlands and suggested prices of the five largest oil companies over more than two years. I find that 38% of the stations respond asymmetrically to changes in the...

When sellers join a platform to sell their products, the platform operator may restrict their strategic decisions. In fact, several platform operators impose most-favored treatment or no-discrimination rules (NDRs), asking sellers not to offer better sales conditions elsewhere. In this paper, I...

When sellers join a platform to sell their products, the platform operator may restrict their strategic decisions. In fact, several platform operators impose most-favored treatment or no-discrimination rules (NDRs), asking sellers not to offer better sales conditions elsewhere. In this paper, I...

We analyze the best price clauses (BPCs) of online travel agents (OTAs) using meta-search price data of more than 45,000 hotels in different countries. Although OTAs apparently have not changed their standard commission rates following the partial ban of BPCs in Europe, we find that BPCs do...

Dominant or apparently dominant internet platform increasingly become subject to both antitrust investigations and further-reaching political calls for regulation. While Google is currently in the focus of the discussion, the next candidate is already on the horizon - the ubiquitous online...

In recent years there has been a large increase in the empirical literature on price behavior. As new and detailed data sets become available, we observe a number of important studies on the microeconomic fundamentals of price setting by firms — mainly retailers — and their impact on...

When sellers join a platform to sell their products, the platform operator may restrict their strategic decisions. In fact, several platform operators impose most-favored treatment or no-discrimination rules (NDRs), asking sellers not to offer better sales conditions elsewhere.In this paper, I...

If an intermediary offers sellers a platform to reach consumers, he may face a hold-up problem: sellers suspect that the intermediary will enter their respective market, competing with them. As sellers fear that they cannot recoup their sunk costs of entry, they do not join the platform. Hence,...