We examine how a merger a ffects wages of unionized labour and, in turn, the profitability of a merger under both Cournot and Bertrand competition. If unions are plant-specific, we find that a merger is more profitable than in a corresponding model with exogenous wages. In contrast to the...

The article examines how the existence of a retailer owned brand, private label, aspects the price setting of a national brand. We …nd that the potential for a private label introduction may lead to price concessions from the national brand producer, but that actual private label...

In a model where two competing downstream firms establish an input joint venture (JV), we analyze how different royalty rules for covering fixed costs affect channel profits. Under running royalties (regardless of whether based on predicted or actual output), the downstream firms' perceived...

The agency model used by Apple and other platform providers such as Google allows upstream firms (content providers like book publishers and developers of apps) to choose the retail prices of their products (RPM) subject to a fixed revenue-sharing rule. We show that (i) this leads to higher...

Standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per-viewer ad prices. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed. We attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and...

In a model where two competing downstream firms establish an input joint venture (JV), we analyze how different royalty rules for covering fixed costs affect channel profits. Under running royalties (regardless of whether based on predicted or actual output), the downstream firms’ perceived...

Slotting allowances are fees paid by manufacturers to get access to retailers’ shelf space. Both in the USA and Europe, the use of slotting allowances has attracted attention in the general press as well as among policy makers and economists. One school of thought claims that slotting...

In this paper we show how an upstream firm can prevent destructive competition among downstream firms producing relatively close substitutes by implementing a price-dependent profit-sharing rule. The rule also ensures that the downstream firms undertake investments which benefit the industry in...

A manufacturer’s incentives to undertake non-contractible investments depend on the profit margin on her sales to the retailer, and slotting allowances can facilitate such incentives by increasing unit wholesale prices. At first glance, it is tempting to conclude that slotting allowances...

In this paper we analyze the market for broadband access. A key feature of this market is that it is considerably more expensive to connect consumers in rural locations than in urban locations. We show that while competition increases welfare compared to monopoly when prices are free to differ...