This paper examines the competitiveness of winner-take-all price competition in homogeneous product oligopoly environments where underlying buyer demands and/or firms’ costs need not be continuous. Our analysis is motivated by the observation that a variety of economic settings have these features. For example, in 1996 an Ivy League university solicited bids from several vendors for its initiat...

According to static models of industrial organization, a rise in competition decreases prices. In this paper, I test whether this conclusion can be reversed in the mobile telecommunications markets where dynamic e ciency e ects might be signi cant. The empirical test relies on the change in the intensity of competition introduced by the entry of the fourth mobile operator in France and the merg...

SymRK is one of the key genes involved in initial steps of legume symbiotic association with fungi (mycorrhization) and nitrogen-fixing bacteria (nodulation). A large portion of the sequence encoding the extracellular domain of SYMRK was obtained for 38 lupine accessions and 2 outgroups in order to characterize this region, to evaluate its phylogenetic utility, and to examine whether its molecu...

Most economists agree that the net effect of the deregulation movement in the United States has been to increase efficiency, with resulting increases in consumer welfare. Because deregulation contemplates the substitution of competition for regulation as the “regulator” of the deregulated markets, deregulation increases the importance of antitrust law as a means of preventing unregulated firms ...

This article explores the enforcement of those laws intended to promote competitive markets through the prohibition of certain practices such as price-fixing, welfare-reducing mergers, and monopolization. The discovery and prosecution of violations are examined including the role of leniency programs. The determination of penalties is investigated with an assessment of their relationship to opt...

We study antitrust enforcement that channels price-fixing incentives through setting fines and allocating resources to detection activities. Antitrust fines obey four legal principles: punishments should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy considerations limit maximum fines, ensure abnormal cartel profits and impose a challenge for optimal an...

An ethical issue is an identifiable situation and also an opportunity which requires an individual or organization to choose from the actions that must be evaluated as right or wrong, ethical or unethical, etc. Product– related ethical issues arise when marketers fail to disclose the risks associated with a product. In pricing, common ethical issues are price fixing or failure to disclose the f...

This paper sheds new light on the role of communication for cartel formation. Using machine learning to evaluate free-form chat among firms in a laboratory experiment, we identify typical patterns both explicit formation and indirect attempts collude tacitly. We document that are less likely communicate explicitly about price fixing more use messages when sanctioning institutions present. effec...