The paper presents a game-theoretic model in order to investigate to what extent an employee privatization program of a State owned firm can be feasible under certain assumptions concerning the players' objective functions and the market structure in which the firm operates. The public managers...

Consumer cooperatives represent a highly successful example of democratic form of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually medium to large-scale companies competing with the profit-maximizing firms in the retail sector. This paper describes this situation as a mixed...

Consumer cooperatives represent a highly successful example of democratic form of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually medium to large-scale companies competing with the profit-maximizing firms in the retail sector. This paper describes this situation as a mixed...

The paper presents a game-theoretic model in order to investigate to what extent an employee privatization program of a State owned firm can be feasible under certain assumptions concerning the players' objective functions and the market structure in which the firm operates. The public managers...

The aim of the present paper is to show that the existence of a concrete outside option for firms' executives can induce, under specific circumstances, every firm to adopt restrictive output practises. In particular, the paper characterizes the conditions for which, under Cournot oligopoly,...

Western European countries have recently witnessed legislative reforms concerning the set of rules governing the co-operative type of organizations (and, in particular, the producer co-operatives). The most innovative aspect introduced by these reforms seems the possibility for the co-operatives...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the...