This paper explores an alternative explanation for the phenomenon of product clustering. The author shows that, because of information externalities, competitive firms tend to market new products that are "close" to those of other firms because it is cheap, perhaps costless, to determine the...

We re-examine the economic justification for the regulation of firms' price policies. Existing analysis of the relative benefits of alternative pricing policies, by treating market structure as exogenous, loses an important trade-off. Price deregulation leading to, for example, discriminatory...