In the economics literature, various views on the likely (efficiency) effects of information exchange, communication between firms and market transparency present themselves. Often these views on information flows are highly conflicting. On the one hand, it is argued that increased information...

We examine the interaction of commercial media and retail producers of well-known consumer products when advertising is used to differentiate brands. In particular, we address how competition in the media market affects choices of advertising and program quality. The results suggest...

We investigate firms’ incentives to locate in the same region to gain access to a large pool of skilled labor. Firms engage in risky R&D activities and thus create stochastic product and implied labor demand. Agglomeration in a cluster is more likely in situations where the innovation step is...

In several European merger cases competition authorities have demanded that the merging firm auctions of virtual capacity. The buyer of virtual capacity receives an option on an amount of output at a pre-specified price, typically equal to marginal cost. This output is sold in the market in...

We introduce stochastic R&D in the Hotelling model and show that if the technical risk is sufficiently high, all firms focus on the most valuable market segment. We then endogenize technical risk by allowing firms to choose between a safe and a risky R&D technology. In equilibrium, firms either...