Payer-driven competition has been widely advocated as a means of increasing efficiency in health care markets. The 1990s reforms to the UK health service followed this path. We examine whether competition led to better outcomes for patients, as measured by death rates after treatment following...

I develop a model of rent seeking with informational foundations and an arbitrary number of rent seekers, and I compare the results with Tullock's (1980) classic model where the influence activities are "black-boxed." Given the microfoundations, the welfare consequences of rent seeking can be...

This Paper introduces optimal competition: the best form of competition in an industry that a competition authority can achieve (given the information constraint that it cannot observe firms’ efficiency levels). We show that the optimal competition outcome in an industry becomes more...

We study the effect of entry on costs and competition in the Portuguese mobile telephony industry. We construct and estimate a model that includes demand, network, and cost equations. The latter accounts for inefficiency and cost reducing effort. We show that failure to account for cost reducing...

This Paper investigates the link between a firm’s competitive environment and the idiosyncratic volatility of its stock returns. We find that firms enjoying high market power, or established in concentrated industries, have lower idiosyncratic volatility. We posit that competition affects...

A unifying theme in the literature on organizations such as public bureaucracies and private non-profits is the importance of missions, as opposed to profit, as an organizational goal. Such mission-oriented organizations are frequently staffed by motivated agents who subscribe to the mission....

Using a general-equilibrium simulation model featuring nominal rigidities and monopolistic competition in product and labour markets, this Paper estimates the macroeconomic benefits and international spillovers of an increase in competition. After calibrating the model to the euro area vs. the...

This paper establishes a causal effect of product market competition on various characteristics of organizational design. Using a unique panel dataset on firm hierarchies of large U.S. firms (1986-1999) and a quasi-natural experiment (trade liberalization), we find that increasing competition...

Using a novel dataset that allows us to trace the primary bank relationships of a sample of mostly unlisted firms, we explore which borrowers are able to benefit from foreign bank presence in emerging markets. Our results suggest that the limits to financial integration are less tight than the...

This Paper evaluates the impact of economic and legal variables on wage differentials between men and women. Since Becker (1957) economists have argued that competitive markets eliminate discrimination in the long run. On the other hand, practically all countries have enacted some sort of law...