The mothballing option has been studied in the literature, but mainly in decision theoretic frameworks. This paper looks at it from a strategic point of view and applies it to an incumbent-entrant framework. In particular, based on the recent strategic interactions between OPEC and the shale oil...

Motivated by the European Union's debate on sanctioning crude oil imports from Russia, we estimate the elasticity of substitution between different crude oil types. Using European data on country-level crude oil imports by field of origin, we argue that crude oil is not a homogenous good and...

This article studies dynamic pricing strategies in the Italian gasoline market before and after the market leader unilaterally announced its commitment to adopt a sticky-pricing policy. Using daily Italian firm level prices and weekly average EU prices, we show that the effect of the new policy...

In this paper, we tackle the dilemma of pruning versus proliferation in a vertically differentiated oligopoly under the assumption that some firms collude and control both the range of variants for sale and their corresponding prices, likewise a multiproduct firm. We analyse whether pruning...

We explore the hypothesis that export policies and trade patterns of national players in the steam coal market are consistent with non-competitive market behavior. We test this hypothesis by developing an equilibrium model which is able to model coal producing nations as strategic players. We...

This paper analyses whether prices and trade-flows in the international market for metallurgical coals were subject to non-competitive conduct in the period 2008 to 2010. To do so, I develop mathematical programming models - a Stackelberg model, two varieties of a Cournot model, and a perfect...

This article proposes a two-stage oligopoly model for the crude oil market. In a game of several Stackelberg leaders, market power increases endogenously as the spare capacity of the competitive fringe goes down. This effect is due to the specific cost function characteristics of extractive...

The seaborne steam coal market changed in recent years. Trade volumes grew dynamically, important players emerged and since 2007 prices increased significantly and remained relatively high since then. In this paper we analyse market equilibria in the years 2006 and 2008 by testing for two...