I study price competition in settings where end products are combinations of components supplied by different monopolists, nesting standard models of perfect complements and imperfect substitutes. I show sufficient conditions for a discrete-choice demand system to yield demand for each product which is logconcave in price, and has log-increasing differences in own and another product’s price, l...

We model the market for news as a two-sided market where newspapers sell news to readers who value accuracy, and sell space to advertisers who value advert-receptive readers. We show that a monopoly newspaper under-reports or biases news that sufficiently reduces advertiser proÞts, whereas in the duopoly case, newspapers may paradoxically increase accuracy as the size of advertisers grows. We t...

The spokes model is a recent framework to study n-firms spatial competition. In a spatial framework firms delivering their product can price discriminate with respect to consumers’ location. Conditions for the existence of a price-location equilibrium of the spokes model with delivered product are established in both the case where there are as many firms as spokes and in the case not all spoke...

A dynamic approach is proposed for the analysis of the Cournot oligopoly game with hyperbolic demand, showing that the adoption of capital accumulation dynamics either à la Solow-Swan or à la Ramsey eliminate the indeterminacy problem characterising the static model when marginal costs are nil. It is proved that the steady state equilibria produced by both models are stable in the saddle point ...

This paper examines a two-period duopoly where consumers are lockedin by switching costs that they face in the second period. The paper’s main focus is on the question of how the consumer lock-in affects the firms’ choice of product durability. We show that firms may face a prisoners’ dilemma situation in that they simultaneously choose nondurable products although they would have higher profit...

We report results of experiments designed to test the predictions of the best reply process. In a Cournot oligopoly with four Þrms, the best reply process should theoretically explode if demand and cost functions are linear. We Þnd, however, no experimental evidence of such instability. Moreover, we Þnd no differences between a market which theoretically should not converge to Nash equilibrium ...

I analyze banks’ incentives to acquire expertise in judging the credit-worthiness of borrowers in an industry with uncertain business conditions. The optimal industrial organization of bank lending features several banks with industry expertise, as well as a competitive fringe of banks without such expertise. The analysis provides a foundation for analyzing the relative merits of focus vs. dive...

Regulatory reform in the Nordic electricity-supply markets has resulted in a single integrated Nordic electricity market. This paper performs an econometric study of market power in the spot market of Nord Pool, the joint Nordic power exchange. I use a dynamic extension of the Bresnahan-Lau model, and weekly data for the period from 1996 through April 1999. To my knowledge, this is the first st...

We analyse economic welfare in R&D intensive industries under varying assumptions on the spillover process. The focus lies on spillover processes with complementary R&D investments such as those modelling absorptive capacity. There spillovers give rise to both negative and positive externalities. We show that the rationale for public policy intervention is strengthened where spillovers also hav...

When fixed, sunk investment costs are high, firms may not have sufficient incentive to enter the market unless future entry is constrained. In this case, the government faces a dilemma between a full commitment and noncommitment of restricted future entry. A way out is to consider a commitment conditional on the realization of the uncertain parameters, such as the trigger-point mechanism (TPM) ...