We analyze the impact of increased outside opportunities brought to consumers by improved access to a global market on local mar- ket performance under monopoly vs. oligopoly. If consumers choose once where to buy, we show that under all forms of organizing the local market, increased...

This paper compares the decisions of s single product oligopolists and of a multiproduct monopolist with respect to pricing, product choice, location and entry, within a 3 stage game on the part of the oligopolists. It turns out that from the consumer's point of view a monopolistic versus...

We investigate firms' incentives to locate in the same region to gain access to a large pool of skilled labour. Firms engage in risky R&D activities and thus create stochastic product and implied labour demand. Agglomeration in a cluster is more likely in situations where the innovation step is...

We introduce stochastic R&D in the Hotelling model and show that if the technical risk is sufficiently high, all firms focus on the most valuable market segment. We then endogenize technical risk by allowing firms to choose between a safe and a risky R&D technology. Firms either both target the...

Using a sample of approximately 11,000 West German firms from all major sectors of the economy, the authors test predictions on the relationship between legal form, firm survival, and employment growth. In their tests, the authors distinguish between voluntary liquidation without losses to...

We develop a general theoretical framework of trade on a platform on which buyers and sellers interact. The platform may be owned by a single large, or many small independent or vertically integrated intermediaries. There also may be free entry into the market for platform slots, or platform...

We develop a theoretical framework of trade on a platform on which buyers and sellers interact, and compare the impact of different platform ownership structures. If two-sided network effects are strong, monopoly ownership induces more trade than dispersed ownership and is therefore socially...

We introduce stochastic R&D in the Hotelling model and show that if the technical risk is sufficiently high, all firms focus on the most valuable market segment. We then endogenize technical risk by allowing firms to choose between a safe and a risky R&D technology. In equilibrium, firms either...