Bargaining power affects the terms of trade negotiated between agents in the economy. When multiple players with interrelated payoffs negotiate contracts, the outcome of each negotiation depends on all the players' bargaining powers. In a model in which a buyer negotiates in sequence with two...

Economists widely agree that, absent sufficient efficiencies or other offsetting factors, mergers that increase concentration substantially are likely to be anticompetitive. Further, holding everything else equal, the magnitude of anticompetitive effects tends to be larger, the larger is the...

We investigate cartelists’ merger behavior using European Commission (EC) cartel decisions over a 28-year span and information on cartelists’ merger activities over the last 30 years. We find that mergers occur frequently. But they cluster in a few particular industries and usually include...

We investigate cartelists' merger behavior using European Commission (EC) cartel decisions over a 28-year span and information on cartelists' merger activities over the last 30 years. We find that mergers occur frequently but that they cluster in a few particular industries and usually include...

We show that below-cost pricing can arise in intermediate goods markets when a monopolist retailer negotiates sequentially with two suppliers of substitute products. Below-cost pricing by one supplier allows the retailer to extract rents from the second supplier. Thus, the retailer and one...

In many markets, homogenous goods and services are sold both by large global frms and small local frms. Surprisingly, the large frms charge, often substantially, higher prices. Examples include hotels, airlines, and coffee shops. This paper provides a parsimonious model that can account for...

Mechanisms where sellers set the price and are charged a linear commission fee are widely used by real world intermediaries, e.g. by real estate brokers. Empirically these commission fees exhibit very little variance, both across heterogeneous regional markets and over time. So far, there is no...

We consider general asset market environments in which agents with quasilinear payoffs are endowed with objects and have demands for other agents' objects. We show that if all agents have a maximum demand of one object and are endowed with at most one object, the VCG transfer of each agent is...