This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting sticky consumers who are exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established firms are challenged by new...

In 2005 the EU lowered the guaranteed minimum prices for crops in its Common Agricultural Policy and stopped market interventions. Consequently, prices started to fluctuate more intensively, and farmers' incomes are now subject to higher price volatility. A crop price insurance scheme could...

Standards often require the use of patented technologies. Holders of standard-essential patents (SEPs) typically commit to make their patents available on "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" (FRAND) terms. National competition authorities increasingly intervene against perceived FRAND...

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a...

In this paper, we explore the impact of a housing rent inflation cap of 4 per cent on price changes for tenancy contracts. We assess the implications of the regulations on the share of the market experiencing: 1) a price decline; 2) unchanged rents (nominal rigidity); 3) a positive growth rate...

Renewable energy (RE) policies are widely used to decarbonize power generation and implemented at various governance levels. We use an analytically tractable two-level model to study the effects of overlapping RE policies from the federal and state governments. We find that there are contrasting...

In this paper, I study the effect of parallel trade (cross border resale of goods without the authorization of the manufacturer) on pharmaceutical regulation in a North-South framework with a firm's endogenous decision to export to the South. Governments in both countries may limit prices...

This paper studies market segmentation that arises from the introduction of a price ceiling in the market for rental housing. When part of the market faces rent control, theory predicts an increase of free-market rents, a consequence of misallocation of households to housing units. We study a...

A non-trivial fraction of people cannot afford to buy pharmaceutical products at unregulated market prices. Therefore, the paper analyzes the public insurance of the pharmaceutical products in terms of price controls and the socially optimal third-degree price discrimination. It characterizes...

This study follows from the recent move by most developing economies to introduce price support programs for selected cereals. For Ethiopia, we examine the price, quantity, welfare and government intervention effects of alternative producer and consumer price policies backed-up by public cereal...

Tradable performance standards are widely used sectoral regulatory policies. Examples include the US lead phasedown, fuel economy standards for automobiles, renewable portfolio standards, low carbon fuel standards, and--most recently--China's new national carbon market. At the same time, theory...

Subsidies to consumers may cause firms to charge higher prices, which offsets consumer benefits from subsidies. We study a subsidy program design that mitigates such price increases by making products' eligibility for a subsidy dependent on firms' commitment to price ceilings. To quantify the...

This paper examines the optimal level of public transport pricing in metropolitan areas, using Stockholm and Paris as case studies. It shows that overall welfare improves if public transport prices are increased during peak hours to balance demand and fund additional services in the peak. This...

This paper examines the optimal level of public transport pricing in metropolitan areas, using Stockholm and Paris as case studies. It shows that overall welfare improves if public transport prices are increased during peak hours to balance demand and fund additional services in the peak. This...

Constantly rising expenditures for pharmaceuticals require government intervention in firms' pricing decisions. To this end, reference pricing systems are a frequently employed regulatory mechanism. This paper considers a duopoly market with vertically differentiated firms under different...

Energy Price Reform in ChinaThe Chinese leadership has determined to assign the market a decisive role in allocating resources. To have the market to play that role, getting the energy prices right is crucial because this sends clear signals to both producers and consumers of energy. While the...

This paper studies regulatory policy interventions aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers who are disengaged and thus exposed to exploitation. We model heterogeneous consumer switching costs alongside asymmetric market shares. This setting encompasses many markets in which established rms are...

Economists recommend to partly redistribute gains to losers from a structural reform, which in many cases may be required for making the reform politically viable. However, taxation is distortionary. Then, it is unclear that compensatory transfers can support a Pareto-improving reform. This...

For admission to statutory health insurance, it is common in Switzerland that health care providers negotiate prices for health care services directly with health insurers. Once they agree upon a price, they must submit the resulting price to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), which can...

Feed-in tariffs are a widespread policy instrument to support the diffusion of renewable energy technologies. I investigate the impact of the size-based differentiation of these tariffs on the adoption of residential scale solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in Germany. Exploiting a policy...

In this work, we address the problem of simultaneously determining a pricing and inventory replenishment strategy under reference price effects. This reference price effect models the fact that consumers not only react sensitively to the current price, but also to deviations from a reference...

Since June 15, 2017, mobile network operators in the European Economic Area may not impose surcharges for making telephone calls, sending text messages, or using data services in other EEA countries. The regulation was designed to create a digital domestic market without adversely affecting...

We analyze the extent to which sales prices for residential housing react to rent-price regulation. To this end, we exploit changes in apartment prices across the regulation treatment threshold. We examine a quasi-natural design in the German federal state of Brandenburg using transaction price...

After controversial public debates, fuel price regulations were implemented in Austria prohibiting fuel retailers from raising their prices more than once per day. This paper investigates whether these policy measures affected the price transmission dynamics from crude oil prices to retail fuel...