We study the seventeenth-century market for figurative paintings in Italy analyzing original contracts between patrons and artists. We show that a number of supply and demand factors affected prices. We find a positive and concave relation between prices and size of paintings reflecting...

type="main" xml:id="ecor12108-abs-0001" <p>I characterise the optimal unilateral trade policy for domestic firms competing in domestic or integrated markets with endogenous entry of foreign firms. Under conditions satisfied in most trade models (as with quasi-linear or CES preferences) the analysis...</p>

We model an international union as a group of countries deciding together the provision of certain public goods and policies because of spillovers. The countries are heterogeneous either in preferences and/or in economic fundamentals. The trade off between the benefits of coordination and the...

A new rationale for the persistence of monopolies is based on a precommitment of the incumbent monopolist to invest in R&D. In a patent race, as long as entry is free, the Arrow effect disappears: the incumbent has more incentives to invest than any outsider. Paradoxically, a market with some...

I develop a Schumpeterian model where the engine of growth is in the microeconomic structure of the patent races and derive new results on the determinants of growth. Under decreasing marginal productivity in the R&D sector, the equilibrium is characterized by small firms investing too little...

We derive a New Keynesian Phillips curve under Calvo staggered pricing and endogenous market structures with Bertrand competition. Both strategic interactions and endogenous business creation strengthen the nominal rigidities. Price adjusters change their prices less when there are more direct...

We study monopolistic competition under indirect additivity of preferences. This is dual to the Dixit-Stiglitz model, where direct additivity is assumed, with the CES case as the only common ground. Other examples include (perceived) demand functions that are exponential or linear. Our...

We provide a unified approach to imperfect (monopolistic, Bertrand and Cournot) competition equilibria with demand functions derived from symmetric preferences over a large but finite number of goods. The equilibrium markups depend on the Morishima Elasticity of Substitution/Complementarity...

We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. Hedonic regressions reveal a number of interesting facts about the taste of Baroque Spanish collectors and the imports of foreign paintings. The hedonic price index shows an impressive increase in the price...