We show that competing firms relax overall competition by lowering future barriers to entry. We illustrate our findings in a two-period model with adverse selection where banks strategically commit to disclose borrower information. By doing this, they invite rivals to enter their market....

We provide new experimental evidence which suggests an asymmetric discouragement effect in lottery contests with heterogeneous abilities. Compared to a symmetric contest, subjects invest less effort when facing a stronger opponent, but they invest the same when facing a weaker opponent. Our...

Merger value is frequently evaluated in single market contexts without considering possible gains stemming from firms' multimarket presence. This study concentrates on the question through which channels, and of which magnitude, mergers among multimarket firms create incremental value. We...

This paper studies the welfare consequences of a vertical merger that raises rivals costs when downstream competition is à la Cournot between firms with constant asymmetric marginal costs. The main result is that such a vertical merger can nevertheless improve welfare if it involves a...

We use laboratory experiments to study the causal effects of favorable and unfavorable competitive market experience on cooperation in a subsequent social dilemma game. The issues we study are part of the broader topic of whether there are behavioral spillovers between different spheres of...

The U.S. and EU Merger Guidelines strongly emphasize the relevance of the "ease of entry" argument in merger evaluations. Up to now, very little is known empirically about how mergers affect entry and exit, and the resulting number of firms in the markets. We empirically test this aspect of...

In many markets, sellers advertise their good with an asking price. This is a price at which the seller will take his good off the market and trade immediately, though it is understood that a buyer can submit an offer below the asking price and that this offer may be accepted if the seller...

We demonstrate how endogenous information acquisition in venture capital markets creates investment cycles when competing financiers undertake their screening decisions in an uncoordinated way, thereby highlighting the role of intertemporal screening externalities induced by competition among...

This paper investigates optimal contest design when the designer s payoff is increasing in competitive balance between contestants. A two-player contest with asymmetric effort costs (asymmetric abilities) is considered. Competitive balance is measured by the difference in winning probabilities...

In the context of supply function competition with private information, we test in the laboratory whether - as predicted in Bayesian equilibrium - costs that are positively correlated lead to steeper supply functions and less competitive outcomes than do uncorrelated costs. We find that the...