This paper explores tying in the situation where a multi-product firm without monopoly power competes against several single-product firms. It considers two independent markets: one for a horizontally differentiated good, the other for a homogeneous good. As opposed to the widely accepted opinion that tying may be profitable only in the case of monopoly power, it is shown that under reasonable ...

An upstream monopoly that provides a new good to a downstream oligopoly might prefer to sell to a single rather than to multiple downstream firms. For example, Apple initially sold its iPhone through one vendor. If a monopoly uses a single vendor, the government may impose a mandatory universal distribution (MUD) requirement that forces the monopoly to sell to all downstream vendors. However, i...

Economists have long recognized that regulation is an imperfect solution to market failure. Do the inefficiencies of regulation outweigh the inefficiencies of market failure? In this paper, we develop a stylized model of a monopolist offering two services, one more widely demanded than the other. We compare aggregate surplus from unregulated monopoly with aggregate surplus from a median voter m...

Although The Interpretation of Dreams was published over a century ago, the integration of psychoanalysis into the broad matrix of modern social and cultural history has barely begun. During his lifetime, Freud’s charisma was so powerful that the historical landscape surrounding him remained in shadows. Only decades after his death did light begin to dawn. The earliest significant attempt to hi...

Much of the research for this paper also connects with the work of the ESRC funded NEXSUS project coordinated by Peter Allen. I am particularly grateful to Richard Nelson and an anonymous referee for their constructive and helpful comments on a previous draft. An insistent theme in Richard Nelson's work is that of 'capitalism as an engine of progress'. In this paper I explore this idea through ...

We analyze the new varieties of state capitalism in the 21st century and explore their implications in terms of both strategic and governance outcomes. We begin by discussing how the current theoretical perspectives conceptualize state-owned enterprises’ strategic behavior. Then we introduce a stylized distinction between four broad, new varieties of state capitalism—wholly owned state-owned en...

The monopoly-supported universal service obligation (USO) is usually defended on the grounds that the monopoly allows for cross-subsidy in letter services that in turn allows universal access to a service of great importance to all. This paper argues that letter delivery (as opposed to other services that may be provided by post offices) is not in universal demand in poor countries, that the si...

We consider a robust version of the classic problem of optimal monopoly pricing with incomplete information. In the robust version, the seller faces model uncertainty and only knows that the true demand distribution is in the neighborhood of a given model distribution. We characterize the pricing policies under two distinct decision criteria with multiple priors: (i) maximin utility and (ii) mi...