Experimental studies in insects have shown how sperm competition can be a potent selective force acting on an array of male reproductive traits . However, the role of sperm quality in determining paternity in insects has been neglected, despite the fact that sperm quality has been shown to influence the outcome of sperm competition in vertebrates . A recent comparative analysis found that males...

The literature suggests that competition among schools might increase quality. However, not much empirical evidence is present as only a few countries allow competition at a large scale. One exception is the Netherlands. Free parental choice is the leading principle of the Dutch education system since the beginning of the 20 century. Based on panel data for the Netherlands we show that there is...

Previous studies seem to agree that increased competition would cause riskier banking behavior. This dissertation shows that when competition intensiÞes, banks have greater incentives for screening loan applicants, and thus loan quality may improve. In addition, competition fosters banks to rely less on collateral requirements. Hence, banks may be less vulnerable to asset price shocks. The empi...

Competition and the Marketplace Increasingly the U.S. health care system relies on competition to allocate scarce health care resources. This is even the case for those services that are ultimately paid for by the government. Competition helps to ensure that insurers, hospitals and physicians minimize their costs, keep their prices as low as possible, and innovate to improve quality. In reality...

The outcome of sperm competition (i.e. competition for fertilization between ejaculates from different males) is primarily determined by the relative number and quality of rival sperm. Therefore, the testes are under strong selection to maximize both sperm number and quality, which are likely to result in trade-offs in the process of spermatogenesis (e.g. between the rate of spermatogenesis and...

This paper addresses the following question: Does competition enhance efficiency in markets with quality uncertainty? Using the mechanism design methodology, we characterize the maximal achievable level of efficiency in such markets, and then use this characterization to analyze how maximal efficiency varies with the degree of market competition. We show that the relationship between them is in...

The relationship between quality and market concentration has long been of interest to both policy makers and economists. In our application, we focus on the effect of competition on one aspect of software quality – time taken by software vendors to release patches that fix vulnerabilities. We empirically estimate how the extent of competition affects the timing of patch release using a novel d...

We study the use of variety and quality of a product line as strategic tools, and specifically the link between quality and the composition of product assortments. We observe that individual stores offer assortments such that the same ice cream flavors from brands within the same quality tier do not appear on store shelves at the same time. This suggests that retailers may use flavor selection ...

We study the use of variety and quality of a product line as strategic tools, and specifically the link between quality and the composition of product assortments. We observe that individual stores offer assortments such that the same ice cream flavors from brands within the same quality tier do not appear on store shelves at the same time. This suggests that retailers may use flavor selection ...

Non-contractible quality dimensions are at risk of degradation when the provision of public services is privatized. However, privatization may increase quality by fostering performance-improving innovation, particularly if combined with increased competition. We assemble a large data set on elderly care services in Sweden between 1990 and 2009 and estimate how opening to private provision affec...