Conventional economic theory assumes that firms always minimize costs given the output they produce. News articles and interviews with executives, however, indicate that firms from time to time engage in cost-cutting exercises. One popular belief is that firms cut costs when they are in economic...

While exclusive dealing can be efficient, the Chicago School has also argued that it cannot be anticompetitive, or that it seldom is. That argument takes two forms; both are weak. First, a price theory argument ("the Chicago Three-Party Argument") depends crucially on a special model of...

Predation occurs when a firm offers consumers favorable deals, usually in the short run, that get rid of competition and thereby harm consumers in the long run. Modern economic theory has shown how commitment or collective-action problems among consumers can lead to such paradoxical effects.But...

We describe a simple initial indicator of whether a proposed merger between rivals in a differentiated product industry is likely to raise prices through unilateral effects. Our diagnostic calibrates upward pricing pressure (UPP) resulting from the merger, based on the price/cost margins of the...

Conventional economic theory assumes that firms always minimize costs given the output they produce. News articles and interviews with executives, however, indicate that firms from time to time engage in cost-cutting exercises. One popular belief is that firms cut costs when they are in economic...

We consider a problem in which a buyer has private information about the efficient scale or nature of a relationship-specific investment by a producer. We show that reducing the producer's ex post bargaining power may enhance efficiency by providing incentives for the buyer to reveal his private...