Hotelling's conceptual framework is expanded to incorporate the effects of a backstop technology on the planning horizon of the suppliers of an exhaustible resource and its price and quantity trajectories. It is shown that in the non-trivial case, the presence of a backstop technology shortens...

New information and communication technology (ICT) makes consumers better informed about available products, product quality and prices, which mitigates problems of asymmetric information. The entry of firms is facilitated, competition and economic effiency is boosted and the market powers of...

This paper discusses how ICT and emerging electronic commerce in consumer products influence the relative efficiency in production of households and firms, resulting in changes in the division of tasks between these two types of agents. Increased information and competence of households, in...

We analyze the effects of technology choices in repeated oligopoly under imperfect monitoring.

Search engines hold the key to helping consumers access the wealth of information on the web. In this paper, I examine the evolution of and competition in the internet search engine market. I find that while early entrants (Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, and Altavista) still have an advantage,...

The Tasmaninan Government has recently followed the reputably successful New Brunswick Government of Canada in setting up an industrial strategy to build an information technolgy (IT) industry of significance. The strategy aims to overcome isolation in small region-based economies and...

Strategic investment is studied in a model where oligopolists take decisions sequentially. First period investment determines second period wealth and output, and this is anticipated correctly by Cournot oligopolists. In our model with linear technology firms invest less as competition...

What factors influence a state-owned enterprise in a transition economy to choose between alternative technology acquisition strategies? This study uses two frameworks developed in the context of industrialized economies -transition costs economics and organizational capacities-to propose...

This paper combines insights from the literature on the economics of organisation with traditional models of market structure to construct a theory of equilibrium firm size heterogeneity under the assumption of a homogenous product industry.

The optimal subsidy allocation mechanism is studied for a benevolent public-policy-decision maker faced with the task of assisting a domestic "infant" firm in its attempt to become established in an international industry.