Tag: Bureau of Economics

Previous research on collusion in procurement markets uses static mechanism design theory to address the limitations on collusive activity imposed by asymmetric information, but in most instances it...

Most analysis of market power assumes that managers act as perfect agents for the shareholders. This paper relaxes this assumption. When managers of a multiproduct firm must exert unobservalbe effort...

This paper shows that an upstream monopolist that sells to competing downstream firms can profitably use exclusive contracts to deter entry even where scale economies are absent. By offering...

Theory argues that R&D intensity and acquisition activity may be either directly or inversely related. However, empirically we know relatively little about which firms are responsible for acquisition...

It is well known that product differentiation increases both prices and profits, other things equal. What is less well understood is how the distribution of consumer preferences affects firms’...

In three recent hospital merger cases, the courts concluded that the merged hospital would be unable to increase price profitably because of competition from distant hospitals. In reaching this...

When punitive damage awards create publicity, this could affect the behavior of uncompensated victims, which has implications for the optimal punitive damage multiplier. A new adjusted multiplier is...

Recent analyses of entry deterrence strategies have required an incumbent's post-entry output or pricing strategy to be profit maximizing. However, most papers have continued to assume that either an...

We compare a seller's agency regime, in which agents give sellers information about buyers' willingness to pay, with a buyer's agency regime, in which agents keep buyers' information confidential...

I analyze the innovation incentives under monopoly and duopoly provision of horizontally differentiated products purchased via bilateral negotiations, integrating the market structure and innovation...

We compare the well-known first-price auction with a common but previously unexamined exchange process that we term "multilateral negotiations." In multilateral negotiations, a buyer solicits price...

Electric power is the latest -- and largest -- industry in which advances in technology have made extensive regulation obsolete. In particular, it is now possible for customers (e.g., residential...

This paper estimates price-marginal cost mark-ups for Canadian manufacturing industries during the 1970s in order to assess the impact of import competition on domestic market power. The results are...

This report presents the results of a nationwide survey of rent-to-own customers. The survey found that most rent-to-own merchandise is ultimately purchased by the customer, most customers are...

Recent theoretical work on retail pricing dynamics suggests that retailers frequently change prices of specific items, even when their costs are unchanged. We extend this theory to explain which...

In some cases, complementary products are sold to different sets of agents to aid in transactions between them. In the context of a simplified model, this paper shows that a monopolist has an...

By permitting firms to have different entry costs, I generalize two previously studied models of two-stage entry and pricing amongst Bertrand competitors. I find that the existing results depend...

Gasoline "divorcement" regulations restrict the integration of gasoline refiners and retailers. Theoretically, vertical integration can harm competition, making it possible that divorcement policies...

Applying conventional horizontal merger enforcement rules to mergers of nonprofit hospitals is controversial. Critics contend that the different objective function of not-for-profits entities should...