We exploit the introduction of free banking laws in US states during the 1837-1863 period to examine the impact of removing barriers to bank entry on bank competition and economic growth. As governments were not concerned about systemic stability in this period, we are able to isolate the...

This article investigates competition in a market with an emerging technology using a discrete choice model to analyze demand and welfare. We focus on industry structure and investigate the impact of different market structures on demand for the new technology and on welfare. The car market...

This article presents a model in which, contrary to conventional wisdom, competi- tion can make banks more reluctant to take excessive risks: As competition intensifies and margins decline, banks face more-binding threats of failure, to which they may respond by reducing their risk-taking. Yet,...

Two approaches can be distinguished with respect to modelling entrepreneurship: (i) the approachfocusing on the net development of the number of entrepreneurs in an equilibrium framework and (ii)the approach focusing on the entries and exits of entrepreneurs. In this paper we unify these...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <I>Economic Journal</I> (2014). Volume 124, pages 887-916.<P> In the process of regulatory reform in the electric power industry, the mitigation of market power is one of the basic problems regulators have to deal with. We use experimental data to...</p></i>

Several surveys on intra-industry dynamics have recently reached the conclusion from a large body of evidence that Gibrat's Law does not hold, i.e., the main finding is that firm growth decreases with firm size. However, almost all of these studies have been based on manufacturing. In this paper...

This paper documents that a process of industrial restructuring has been transforming the developed economies, where large corporations are accounting for less economic activity and small firms are accounting for a greatershare of economic activity. Not all countries, however, are experiencing...

In this article we study patterns of vertical product differentiation in a multi-product monopoly using a random utility model. Prior research shows that applying such a model in a multi-product setting implies symmetric patterns of product differentiation in which all product variants of a...

This paper studies asymmetric price responses of individual firms, via daily retail prices of almost all gasoline stations in the Netherlands and suggested prices of the five largest oil companies over more than two years. I find that 38% of the stations respond asymmetrically to changes in the...

This paper models strategic interactions between a product supplier, a provider of information about product quality, and end users, in the context of road transportation. Using a game-theoretical analysis of suppliers' pricing strategies, we assess the social welfare effects of traffic...