We analyse the potential for shifting freight transports to the railways in Western and Central Europe. This potential arises for large and concentrated freight flows over long distances of about 300 km or more. However, we show that there are only few such freight flows in Europe, and that they...

The most important policy instruments of the Bundesbank and of the coming European Central Bank involve lending to domestic credit institutions. In this monetary setup, banks use short-term central bank credits extensively in order to refinance long-term loans to the public, which makes them...

We analyse competition between two network providers when the quality of each network depends negatively on the number of customers connected to that network. With respect to price competition we provide a sufficient condition for the existence of a unique pure strategy Nash equilibrium....

We model competition between two unregulated mobile phone companies with price-elastic demand and less than full market coverage. We also assume that there is a regulated full-coverage fixed network. In order to induce stronger competition, mobile companies could have an incentive to raise their...

Access to short-term credit is an important source od liquidity for firms. This article shows that the usual asymmetric information problem in credit markets can result in an oversupply of trade credits, eventually leading to overproduction of liquidity and underinvestment in log-term projects....