This paper empirically analyzes the determinants of demand in the German automobile industry. Our primary goal is to refine the existing literature on that topic by exploring the impact of uniqueness seeking behaviour of individuals on the demand schedule. Using a dataset on the segment of compact cars in the German market, we show that consumers have an intrinsic need for uniqueness seeking, a...

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 legislative change in takeoff and landing restrictions at LaGuardia Airport provides an opportunity to study the effect of an exogenous shock to product quality on prices in the airline industry. I test how the price response varies with the degree of competition in the market. I find that prices fall by $1.42 on average for each additional minute of flight delay, and that the price response ...

A human subject laboratory experiment compares the real-time market performance of the two most popular auction formats for online ad space, Vickrey-ClarkeGroves (VCG) and Generalized Second Price (GSP). Theoretical predictions made in papers by Varian (2007) and Edelman, et al. (2007) seem to organize the data well overall. Efficiency under VCG exceeds that under GSP in nearly all treatments. ...

We discuss economic rationales behind peering decisions in the Internet. In the first part of the paper we analyze the decision about a bilateral peering agreement between two commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) who are in Cournot competition. In the second part we discuss multilateral peering between commercial ISPs and an academic research network (ARN). The latter is organized as cl...

This paper investigates price rigidity arise out of the speci c market structures, such as degree of market concentration and pricing decisions of retailers and manufacturers. Using Japanese scanner data that contains transaction prices and sales for more than 1,600 commodity groups from 1988 to 2008, we nd statistically signi cant negative correlation between the degree of market concentration...

Does the Internet provide a failsafe against media consolidation in the wake of an easing of media ownership rules? This paper posits a model of news outlet selection on the Internet in which consumers experience cognitive costs that increase with the number of options faced. Consistent with psychological evidence, these costs may be reduced by constraining one’s choice set to “safe bets” famil...

We construct a model of trade with heterogeneous retailers to examine the effects of trade liberalization on retail market structure, imports and social welfare. We are especially interested in investigating the transmission of lower import prices into consumer prices and the effects of retail market regulation. The paper shows that changes in import prices may have large effects on consumer pr...

The American Medical Association and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America have developed new standards to curb the influence sales representatives may have on physicians’ drug choices. Yet the literature fails to clarify the extent to which shares of prescriptions for branded drugs are driven by advertising to physicians or by usage persistence in choices. Using unique aggre...

We analyse congestion pricing in a road and rail network, where the two modes are imperfect substitutes. On the road there is bottleneck congestion; in each train there is crowding congestion. We model two dimensions of preference heterogeneity, where these two dimensions have opposite effects on the welfare impact of congestion pricing and lead to different distributional effects. The distribu...