We propose a model of the European gas market where the risk that Russian deliveries are interrupted is endogenized. While Russia's attempts to buy considerable parts of the European downstream industry have faced strong political opposition, we argue that Russian participation in the downstream...

European and national cartel authorities have required dominant national gas pipelines to auction off certain quantities (typically about 10 % of their sales) to competitors. Do such auctions really improve the competitiveness of the wholesale market? Based on a model where oligopolistic...

In a two-stage oligopoly, with investment in the first stage and quantity or price competition in the second stage, there is a kind of Folk Theorem: We find (i) over-investment if the goods are substitutes and competition is in strategic substitutes, (ii) under-investment if we have either...

We analyze the effect of price caps on equilibrium production and welfare in oligopoly under demand uncertainty. We find that high price caps always increase production and welfare as compared to the situation without price cap. Price caps close to marginal cost may lead to zero production,...

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences, which leads to inefficiency. We analyze an exogenous linking...

We analyze a market game where firms choose capacities under uncertainty about future market conditions and make output choices after uncertainty has unraveled. We show existence and uniqueness of equilibrium under imperfect competition and establish that capacity choices by strategic firms are...

The extant literature on matching markets assumes ordinal preferences for matches, while bargaining within matches is mostly excluded. Central for this paper, however, is the bargaining over joint profits from potential matches. We investigate, both theoretically and experimentally, a seemingly...

Shifting the responsibility for a necessary but costly action to someone else is often called Passing the Buck. Examples of such behavior in politics are environmental and budget problems which are left to future generations. Small group examples are (not) washing the dishes or (not) dealing...

Most incomes underlie some risk, i.e. ex ante they can be regarded as a lottery ticket. In every society, the lucky winners of this lottery compensate unlucky losers (unemployed workers or bankrupt entrepreneurs) privately and/or by public insurances. Do voluntary solidarity payments depend on...