Managerial diseconomies of scale are often discussed but seldom studied. The purpose of the current research is to open up avenues of inquiry into this potentially important topic. The research tests whether diseconomies of scale influence corporate performance. It uses Coasian transaction cost...

The first generaation of competition laws in Central and Eastern Europe -- enacted in 1990 and 1991 in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Russia -- have undergone significant amendments following their earliest enforcement period. This paper uses an analytical framework previously used to...

We analyze the effects of a legally-binding price floor using Hotelling's model of locational competition. A moderate price-floor destroys the maximal differentiation equilibrium of d'Aspremont et. al., by allowing firms to compete more aggressively for market share. Minimum differentiation...

This working paper tests Oliver Williamson’s proposition that transaction cost economics can explain the limits of firm size. A review of the relevant literature corroborates Williamson’s theoretical framework and five hypotheses are formulated: (1) Bureaucratic failure, in the form of...

By a well-known argument, securities holders do not directly benefit from risk-reducing corporate diversification when they can replicate this difersification on their own. Some have argued that corporate diversification may be of value, or can otherwise be explained by, the agency relationship...

A presente comunicação preparada para o III Congresso de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, que decorreu em Setembro de 2002. Nesta comunicação visa- se identificar novas actividades empresariais, em emergência, que possam resultar da dinamização de uma área de enorme potencialidade na...

We compare the social welfare generated by a domestic government in the two types of policy setups: a "commitment" regime in which the government sets its policy instrument before the strategic choice is made by the domestic firm and a "non-commitment" regime where the policy variable is set...

1. Introduction Along with widespread acknowledgement of the importance of relevant market definitions to the outcome of most antitrust cases, there is extensive commentary on the inconsistency with which the concept has been applied by the courts. Consistency, of course, requires a coherent...

Some items in a household’s market basket, notably durable goods, are purchased only occasionally. In contrast, standard price measures implicitly assume that consumers purchase some amount of every available good in every period. The occasional purchase of an existing good by a new buyer...

A supplier is known to be subject to opportunism when contracting secretly with downstream competitors, particularly when downstream firms have "passive beliefs." We stress that in many situations, an equilibrium with passive beliefs may not exist and passive beliefs appear less plausible than...