It is usually believed that higher competition, implying more active firms, benefits consumers and encourages the antitrust authorities to foster competition. We show that this view can be misleading, and higher competition may actually make the consumers worse-off. We suggest that the antitrust...

It is generally believed that higher competition benefits consumers, and encourage the antitrust authorities to foster competition. We show that this view can be misleading in the presence of welfare-maximising nationalised firms. Using a simple model with a nationalised firm, we show that entry...

Considering a move from monopoly to duopoly, Bastos et al. (“Open shop unions and product market competition”, 2010, Canadian Journal of Economics) provides open-shop union, where the union density is less than one, as a theoretical reason for the evidence of a positive relationship between...

We show that if the product market is not very much concentrated, open shop union, where the union density is less than one, may not be a justification for a positive relationship between product market competition and unionized wage, irrespective of the union density, bargaining power of the...

We provide a new rationale for bi-sourcing, which refers to the situation where a final goods producer buys an input from an outside supplier and also produces it in-house. We also show the effects of the product market competition and the implications of different and common outside input...

We show that the entry of private profit-maximising firms makes the consumers worse off compared to having a nationalised monopoly. Such entry increases the nationalised firm’s profit, industry profit, and social welfare, at the expense of the consumers. Our result is important for competition...