Abstract This paper surveys the literature on scale and scope economies in the water and sewerage industry. The magnitude of scale and scope economies determines the cost efficient configuration of any industry. In the case of a regulated sector, reliable estimates of these economies are...

Abstract Payment cards have been a perennial source of debate among economists. That debate received additional fodder in 2010 with passage in the US of the Durbin Amendment, which targets debit card interchange fees. I assess the Durbin Amendment, testing the interchange fee cap it imposes...

Abstract This paper analyzes competition in a two-period differentiated-products duopoly in the presence of both switching costs and network effects. We show that they have opposite implications on the demand side, specially in the first period. Switching costs reduce demand elasticities and...

Abstract We consider an industry where an upstream firm determines the size of a network used by two downstream firms. We contrast ownership unbundling and legal unbundling, where the upstream firm maximizes its total profit, including the profit of its downstream subsidiary(ies), but does not...

Abstract This paper studies the performance of a direct charging regime in the ATM market in the presence of uninformed consumers who fail to recognize all relevant fees when selecting a bank. We show that the success of a direct charging regime critically depends on consumer information: the...

Abstract This paper examines the design of vertically related industries with a regulated monopolistic upstream input and competitive downstream activities. Two institutional patterns are investigated. Ownership separation entails full unbundling between upstream and downstream activities. Legal...

Abstract Regional sports networks (RSNs) have become among the most important and expensive programming carried by multi-channel video programming distributors (MVPDs), many of which have acquired RSNs in whole or in part. Under Nash bargaining theory, vertical integration creates incentives to...

Abstract We conduct a basic analysis of entry and exit in the US broadband market, using a complete FCC census of providers from 2005 to 2008. There is a tremendous amount of (simultaneous) entry and exit in the US broadband market. Most entry is from existing providers expanding into new...

Abstract We consider a case in which two competing suppliers of hardware devices and content each chooses whether to make its content compatible with the other’s device. Our main result is that the outcome of these choices depends upon whether the firms’ major source of profit lies in the...

Abstract In this paper we develop a methodology to quantify the value to consumers of the non-price characteristics of airline networks. Our research demonstrates that analyses that ignore the quality effects associated with expanded airline networks generate incorrect findings and thus should...