One of the major areas for research and investment related to the Internet is the provision of quality of service (QoS). In this paper, study the equilibrium outcomes when two Internet Access Providers (IAPs) interact. These IAPs are assumed to be rural dialup providers (as data shows that duopolies often exist in such markets), using empirically based demand functions. To determine the equilib...

This paper analyzes the increasing tariff protection in the Spanish iron and steel industry over the first third of the 20th century. Learning effects are explicitly included to model a dynamic game of trade liberalization. The government chooses the tariff level while firms decide how much to produce each period. Firm’s production decisions determine their future cost levels. Assuming that lea...

In this paper we examine how preferential trade liberalization affects the terms of trade, external tariffs and welfare of the integrating countries and the rest of the world. Our analysis is based on a three-country, three-good, general equilibrium model with symmetric customs union (CU) members. The model generalizes previous work by considering more general consumer preferences and productio...

Past research in marketing and psychology suggests that pricing structure may influence consumers’ perception of value. In the context of two commonly used pricing schemes, pay-peruse and two-part tariff, we evaluate the impact of pricing structure on consumer preferences for access services. To this end, we develop a utility-based model of consumer retention and usage of a new service. A notab...

tele.ring is a mobile phone organization selling contracts and cell phones in the Austrian market. The market situation in 2005 was highly competitive and dynamic resulting in relatively short tariff life cycles. Excessively long lead times made tele.ring’s management feel dissatisfied with their new tariff development process. Furthermore, a new competitor had entered the market posing a major...

In the negotiations on agriculture in the World Trade Organization, it was asserted that an importing state trading enterprise affects the domestic market but not the international market. This claim is investigated through specifying a model of intermediaries in international trade. There are two kinds of intermediaries: first, a state trading enterprise; and second, an n-firm Cournot oligopso...

The typical economic model implicitly assumes that the set of goods in an economy never changes. As a result, the predicted efficiency loss from a tariff is small, on the order of the square of the tariff rate. If we loosen this assumption and assume that international trade can bring new goods into an economy, the fraction of national income lost when a tariff is imposed can be much larger, as...

Recently, many algorithms have been developed for autonomous agents to manage home energy use on behalf of their human owners. By so doing, it is expected that agents will be more efficient at, for example, choosing the best energy tariff to switch to when dynamically priced tariffs come about. However, to date, there has been no validation of such technologies in any field trial. In particular...

The majority of African countries implemented import liberalisation in the 1990s. This paper explores factors that may explain the pattern of protection and of tariff reform. We consider political economy explanations, motivated specifically by the Grossman and Helpman (1994) model of protection in response to industry lobbies, and the possibility that reforms are technocratic. Using industry-l...