We demonstrate how endogenous information acquisition in venture capital markets creates investment cycles when competing financiers undertake their screening decisions in an uncoordinated way, thereby highlighting the role of intertemporal screening externalities induced by competition among...

This report argues in favour of an economics-based approach to Article 82, in a way similar to the reform of Article 81 and merger control. In particular, we support an effects-based rather than a form-based approach to competition policy. Such an approach focuses on the presence of...

We investigate how costly acquisition and exchange of customer-specific information affects industry profit and consumer welfare. Consumers differ in their preferences for competing brands and in their switching costs between brands. Brand-producing firms use their acquired knowledge of...

This report argues in favour of an economics-based approach to Article 82, in a way similar to the reform of Article 81 and merger control. In particular, we support an effects-based rather than a form-based approach to competition policy. Such an approach focuses on the presence of...

This study demonstrates that the common view, whereby an increase in competition leads banks to increased risk taking, fails to hold in an environment where consumers can choose in which bank to make a deposit based on their knowledge of the riskiness incorporated in the banks' outstanding loan...

We establish that the effect of intensified deposit market competition, measured by reduced switching costs, on the probability of bank failures depends critically on whether we focus on competition with established customer relationships or competition for the formation of such relationships....

We analyze differentiated retail industries where shops engage in two-stage competition with respect to opening hours and prices. We explore the effects of consumers' shopping time flexibility by comparing bi-directional consumers with forward- or backward-oriented consumers, who can either...

The core industries of the new information economy are characterized by imperfect competition, asymmetric information or external effects. Thus, well-designed microeconomic policies, in the form of competition policies, technology policies or combinations of these, have strong potential of...