We study a game in which two firms compete in quality to serve a market consisting of consumers with different initial consideration sets. If both firms invest below a certain threshold, they only compete for those consumers already aware of their existence. Above this threshold, a firm is...

Recent empirical studies suggest that there is a rising trend of market power across sectors in advanced economies. We contribute to this line of research by providing industry-specific evidence for German manufacturing industries, based on representative high-quality firm level data from...

Research and Development (R&D) and innovation are crucial features of the seed industry. To supportlarge R&D investments by the private sector, strong intellectual property rights, such as patents, arenecessary. The exclusivity granted by patents naturally creates market power positions and...

In the context of an infinitely repeated capacity-constrained price game, we endogenize the composition of a cartel when firms are heterogeneous in their capacities. When firms are sufficiently patient, there exists a stable cartel involving the largest firms. A firm with sufficiently small...

Many high technology goods are based on standards that require several essential patents owned by different IP holders. This gives rise to a complements and a double mark-up problem. We compare the welfare effects of two different business strategies dealing with these problems. Vertical...

The study analyses the price formation and market functionality of the Finnish food chain. A significant portion of the report consists of international comparisons. The main comparison countries are the so-called old EU countries (EU15) of Western Europe, the new EU countries (EU12) and the...

Since 1995 when OECD began conducting Economic Surveys of the Russian Federation many policy recommendations relating to structural reform and framework conditions have been made. This paper is an update of an earlier paper that described actions taken up to October 2011 (Vaziakova et al.,...

Over the past decade, France has substantially eased the burden of anti-competitive regulations and effectively enforced competition law against anti-competitive practices. Various sectors have been opened up more widely to competition, and the powers of the Competition Authority have been...

In its landmark ruling in Illinois Brick Co. v. Illinois in 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court restricted standing to sue for recovery of antitrust damages to direct purchasers. However, antitrust damages are typically (in part) passed on to intermediaries lower in the chain of production and...

The conventional wisdom is that the formation of patent pools is welfare enhancing when patents are complementary, since the pool avoids a double-marginalization problem associated with independent licensing. This conventional wisdom relies on the effects that pooling has on downstream prices....