type="main" xml:lang="en" <p>This article examines the welfare effects of third-degree price discrimination under oligopolistic competition with horizontal product differentiation. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for price discrimination to improve social welfare: the degree of...</p>

It is often argued, though mostly informally, that outward foreign direct investment (FDI) is a synonym for the export of employment and thus detrimental to the home economy. To see whether and under what conditions this intuition indeed holds true, we construct a model of unionized duopoly and...

We provide a theoretical framework to discuss the relation between firm size and vertical structures. The framework is based on a Hotelling model with three downstream and three upstream firms. Each downstream firm procures its input from each upstream firm and the procurement problems affect...

Should civil servants (employees at public institutions) be allowed to bargain collectively? To answer this question, we construct a model of unionized mixed duopoly and examine the optimal regulatory framework of public institutions, especially focusing on a wage regulation imposed on the...

This paper presents the development of an equilibrium theory of vertical merger that incorporates strategic behaviors in the Hotelling-type location model for the purpose of considering the relationship between the strategies of downstream firms for product differentiation and vertical...

This paper provides an example that incumbent firms might allow potential entrants to enter a market. The market consists of two sub-markets: a high-end market and a low-end market. (i) If low-quality products are of no value to consumers in the high-end market, (ii) consumers in the low-end...

We examine incentives of bottleneck facility holders to manipulate access charge accounting in free entry downstream markets. We consider the situation wherein one firm holds an upstream bottleneck facility and new entrants use it at the regulated price (access fee) to provide final products....

We investigate what kind of competitive pressure induces existing firms to engage in more intensive innovation activities. We examine two types of competitive pressure: a price decrease in competitive fringe firms and a quality improvement therein. We use an oligopoly model with vertical...