This paper considers the incentives of oligopolistic firms to diversify into technologically related markets when there are diseconomies of scope. There is a rent-extraction incentive for firms to adopt flexible technologies, which enable them to enter technologically related markets, thereby...

We find the Nash equilibria for monotone n-player symmetric games where each player chooses whether to participate. Examples include market entry games, coordination games, and the bar-room game depicted in the movie 'A Beautiful Mind'. The symmetric Nash equilibrium involves excessive...

This paper studies the diffusion of a new technology that is brought to market while its potential is still uncertain. We consider a dynamic game in which firms improve both a new and a rival old technology while learning about the relative potential of both technologies. We use the model to...

Unprecendented growth of barter is a striking phenomenon of Russia's transition. The explanations of barter include tight monetary policy, tax evasion and poor financial intermediation. We show that the market power may also be important. We build a model of imperfect competition in which firms...

This paper studies how the existence of a potential entrant influences an incumbent’s choice of quality in a model of vertical product differentiation and entry. Both firms face fixed set-up costs and quality-dependent costs of production, and compete on quality and price. With identical...

Recent years have witnessed an increased interest, by competition agencies, in assessing the competitive effects of partial acquisitions. We propose an empirical structural methodology to examine quantitatively the unilateral impact of partial acquisitions involving pure financial interests...

Flexibility - the ability to react swiftly to others' choices - facilitates collusion by reducing gains from defection before opponents react. Under imperfect monitoring, however, flexibility may also hinder collusion by inducing punishment after too few noisy signals. The combination of these...

Although naive intuition may indicate the opposite, the existing literature suggests that uncertainty about costs in the homogeneous-good Bertrand model intensifies competition: it lowers price and raises total surplus (but also makes profits go up). Those results, however, are derived under two...

The growth of private-equity investment strategies in which firms often hold partial ownership interests in competing firms has led competition agencies to take an increased interest in assessing the competitive effects of partial horizontal acquisitions. We propose a methodology to evaluate the...