This paper tests the presence of multiple independent submarkets in the Italian motor insurance industry. Independence is motivated by administrative boundaries among provinces and by further locational reasons. We find that the independence effects are sufficient to induce a minimum degree of...

A major policy concern regarding patenting activity is related to the actual enforceability of the patents granted by Patent Offices. The risk of facing elevated legal costs to defend patent rights can affect ex-ante incentives to invest in R&D. This paper analyses whether the availability of...

Sutton (1998) has recently proposed a theoretical lower bound to firm size inequality when a market is made of several independent submarkets. His results are valid asymptotically, as the number of submarkets becomes arbitrarily large. We show that, in small samples, his results can be...

This study makes use of a very long time series of the S&P Composite Index, checking once more that the rates of return benefit from aggregational normality. It performs unit root tests as well as elementary statistical tests that take advantage of normality. It finds that mean blur is not...

This paper tests the presence of multiple independent submarkets in the Italian motor insurance industry. Independence is motivated by administrative boundaries among provinces and by further locational reasons. We find that the independence effects are sufficient to induce a minimum degree of...