Highlights the theory of competition advanced by da Empoli in the late 1920s. The main point is the existence of discontinuities in industrial concerns. This leads to the possibility that prices exceed marginal costs and depend also on ultramarginal costs, a new concept elaborated by da Empoli....

We offer new and clean evidence that social interactions impact on individuals’ choices. In an experimental trust game we study whether and how trustor's behaviour is affected by social influence of other trustors’ choices over time. We account for three important factors of trustors’...

We analyse the effects of the advertising ban on French public television, which came into effect on the 5th of January 2009. The ban forbids commercial advertising on public TV in the time slot 20.00-6.00. By using a difference-in-difference approach we show that advertising which was...

While peer punishment has been shown to increase group cooperation, there is open debate on how cooperative norms can emerge and on what motives drive individuals to punish. In a public good experiment we compared alternative punishment institutions and found (1) higher cooperation levels under...

This paper studies the relationship between trademarks and economic activity. We compare the distribution of product classes across national, EU, and international trademarks deposited by Italian firms. In relation to EU trademarks, we analyze some characteristics of the deposits of major...

This paper experimentally studies peer punishment under three alternative technologies. We find that the choice of peer punishment technology has a substantial impact on group performance. First, under a technology where at least two subjects in the group must agree before another group member...

The aim of our experiments is to test the effect of different information settings on firms’ behaviour in duopoly price and quantity games. We find that, when players have full information on their rivals’ choices, the imitation rule prevails and such learning behaviour induces more...

This paper experimentally studies peer punishment under three alternative technologies. We find that the choice of peer punishment technology has a substantial impact on group performance. First, under technology where at least two subjects in the group must agree before another group member can...

Punishing the free-riders of a team can promote group efficiency but is costly for the punisher. For this reason, economists see punishment as a second-order public good. We show in an experiment that subjects do not value punishment for its deterrence but instead for the satisfaction of...