Oil price indexing is a peculiar feature of the natural gas markets in Germany and other European countries. It is closely linked to the existence of local monopolies (at least de facto) and of the so called takeorpayʺ (TOP) contracts. After discussing the relation between these features and...

Consider a market with switching costs that is initially served by a monopolistic incumbent. How can a competitor successfully enter this market? We show that an offer to undercut the incumbent by a fixed margin serves this purpose. This strategy dominates traditional entry where the entrant...