<em>Innovation and marketing in traditional sectors: some industrial policy implications</em> - In an environment with increasing competition, the importance of taking care of customers through marketing, high quality service and after sale support has been shown to be crucial for getting competitive...

In this paper, we examine how uncertainty can affect successive markets, when uncertainty can affect both upstream and downstream markets' conditions. The main result of the paper is that the equilibrium solution depends on how much dependent are the events.

In equipment-intensive sectors - such as water utilities, power generation, gas - billions of dollars are spent in capital equipment. We discuss and characterize the optimal policy of a profit-maximizing firm and compare it with the optimal policy of a welfare-maximizing planner. When there is...

This paper explores (i) the incentives for an incumbent firm to acquire an entrant willing to sell a product innovation rather than openly competing with this entrant, and (ii) in case of acquisition, the incentives to sell simultaneously both the existing products and the new one rather than...

The fierce growth in global competition has led politicians and economists in Italy to shift the focus of the debate to the pressing need for the country’s small firms to formulate appropriate strategic responses. In particular, the discussion has prompted the question of how best to ensure...

In equipment-intensive sectors — such as water utilities, power generation, gas — billions of dollars are spent in capital equipment. We discuss and characterize the optimal policy of a profit-maximizing firm and compare it with the optimal policy of a welfare-maximizing planner. When there...

In the last decades, transitional countries of Central and Eastern Europe have engaged in strong privatization programs of public utilities. However, a large part of them did not meet legal and economic conditions needed for a market economy to take place. In this paper, we study how a firm...