This paper studies the relationship between transparency on the consumer side and productivity of firms. We show that more transparent markets are characterized by higher average productivity as firms with low productivity abstain from entering these markets.

In linear-city models, if firms are allowed (not allowed) to locate outside the linear city, they engage in excessive (insufficient) R&D investments from the normative viewpoint. This implies that the feasible set of locations drastically affects their investments.

We provide a game-theoretic alternative of the kinked demand curve explanation of rigid prices. We analyze a duopoly where firms choose quantities and objectives. We identify cases under which firms choose to maximize their revenue. Under these cases, prices are insensitive to unit costs.

We show that an outside innovator has a higher incentive to innovate than an incumbent innovator, by auctioning off his patent rights exclusively to an incumbent firm. For significant innovations this is also superior to selling licenses directly.

We model a vertically differentiated duopoly with quantity-setting firms as an extended game in which firms noncooperatively choose the timing of moves at the quality stage, to show that at the subgame, perfect equilibrium sequential play obtains, with the low-quality firm taking the leader’s...

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...

I study the institution of avoiding hiring one’s own Ph.D. graduates for assistant professorships. I argue that this institution is necessary to create better incentives for researchers to incorporate new information in studies, facilitating the convergence to asymptotic learning of the...

We analyse the relative welfare effects of an R&D and an output subsidy in a mixed duopoly. We show that an R&D subsidy is beneficial for society as a whole, and socially superior to an output subsidy, when spillovers are sufficiently high. Otherwise, an output subsidy is socially superior.

Fjell and Heywood (2004) show that privatization is not necessarily welfare neutral in mixed oligopolies under a production subsidy if firms move sequentially. We find that the neutrality holds for any time structure if instead an output floor is introduced.

This paper sets up a three-stage (R&D, technology licensing, and output) oligopoly game in which only one of the firms undertakes a cost-reducing R&D and may license the developed technology to the others by means of a two-part tariff (i.e., a per-unit royalty and an upfront fee) contract. It is...