A methodology is developed and applied to compare the performance of publicly fundedagencies providing treatment for alcohol abuse in Maine. The methodology estimates aWiener process that determines the duration of completed treatments, while allowing foragency differences in the effectiveness...

In a winner-take-all duopoly market for systems in which firms invest to improvetheir products, a monopoly supplier of an essential system component may havean incentive to advantage itself by technological tying; that is, by designing thecomponent to work better in its own system. If the...

This policy study uses U.S. Census microdata to evaluate how subsidies for universal telephone service vary in their impact across low-income racial groups, gender, age, and home ownership. Our demand specification includes both the subsidized monthly price (Lifeline program) and the subsidized...

This paper takes the new approach of using a copula to characterize consumer preferences in a discrete choice model of product differentiation, and applies it to the economics of monopoly and duopoly. The comparative statics of demand strength and preference diversity, both properties of the...

The paper considers an industry featuring agency problems between outside investors and entrepreneurs who manage the firms comprising the industry. In a range of circumstances, industry scale is independent of product market structure, and is determined solely by the amount of equity financing...

In a winner-take-all duopoly market for systems in which firms invest to improve their products, a monopoly supplier of an essential system component may have an incentive to advantage itself by technological tying; that is, by designing the component to work better in its own system. If the...

The spokes model of nonlocalized spatial competition provides a new analytical tool for differentiated oligopoly and a representation of spatial monopolistic competition. At the unique symmetric equilibrium of the spokes model, an increase in the number of firms leads to lower prices when...

The paper surveys the economics literature on the competitive effects of vertical integration, assesses the relevance of the economics literature for several recent regulatory and antitrust cases, and defends a structured rule of reason approach to evaluating the competitive effects.

A vertically integrated firm has the incentive and ability to use exclusive contracts to foreclose an equally efficient upstream competitor and to effect a cartelization of the downstream industry. Its ability to do so may be limited when downstream firms are heterogeneous and supply contracts...