We study competition between an incumbent Credit Rating Agency (CRA) and a sequence of entrant CRAs that are potentially more e¤ective but whose ability in appraising default risk is unproven when they enter the market. We show that free entry competition fails to select the most competent CRA...

This paper uses a two-sided market model of hospital competition to study the implications of different remunerations schemes on the physicians’ side. The two-sided market approach is characterized by the concept of common network externality (CNE) introduced by Bardey et al. (2010). This type...

Cross-country variability in regulatory frameworks, industrial policy, physician/pharmacy autonomy, brand/generic distinctions, and in the practice of medicine contributes to ambiguous interpretations of pharmaceutical cost comparisons. Here we report cross-country comparisons that: (i) focus on...

This paper analyzes competitive pricing policies by multiproduct firms facing heterogeneous buying patterns. We show that cross-subsidization arises when firms have comparative advantages on different products but are equally efficient overall: Firms earn a profit from multi-stop shoppers by...

The advent of "smart meters" will make possible Real Time Pricing of electricity: customers will face and react to wholesale spot prices, thus consumption of electric power will be aligned with its opportunity cost. This article determines the marginal value of a fraction of demand (or a...

We show that large retailers, competing with smaller stores that carry a narrower range, can exercise market power by pricing below cost some of the products also offered by the smaller rivals, in order to discriminate multi-stop shoppers from onestop shoppers. Loss leading thus appears as an...

This article examines imperfectly competitive investment in electric power generation in the presence of congestion on the transmission grid. Under simple yet realistic assumptions, it precisely derives the technology mix as a function of the capacity of the transmission interconnection. In...