In this paper, we undertake an in-depth inquiry into the nature of sharing externalities, and study how they affect the market outcome. We show that the key thing for understanding sharing externalities is the interplay between two forces: the specialization/complexity effect, on the one hand,...

The relationship between technical progress and price competition is a controversial issue in economics. This paper highlights the fact that investment in technical progress is an authentic type of competition which benefits the consumers rather than the industry. This type of competition exists...

This paper investigates the incentives to invest in improving the quality (as distinguished to investment in a new activity) in telecommunication industry using the empirical example of wireless markets. We highlight that investment incentives are positively related to the potential for...

This paper investigates competition between health care insurance companies under different funding regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German health care reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find...

This paper empirically assesses the impact of the intensity of competition on investment in new technologies within the mobile telecommunications industry. Using firm level panel data and an instrumental variable estimation it finds an inverted-U relationship between competition intensity and...