This paper theoretically analyzes the role of reference prices on competition and welfare in a context of a circular city model with free entry and reference prices, in which paying market prices above a reference negatively affects the utility of consumers. Agents interact in a three-stage...

An imperfectly-informed regulator needs to procure multiple units of some good (e.g., green energy, market liquidity, pollution reduction, land conservation) that can be produced with heterogeneous technologies at various costs. How should she optimally procure these units? Should she run...

We give a thorough analytic characterization of a large class of sticky-price models where the firm’s price setting behavior is described by a generalized hazard function. Such a function provides a tractable description of the firm’s price setting behavior and allows for a vast variety of...

The paper analyses the reasons for Japan's persistently low inflation since the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy (low inflation conundrum). It is shown that Japan experienced a structural break from a high-growth period with relatively high inflation to a low-growth period with...

Over the past several years, the federal government has consulted widely in formulating new rules for the regulation of brand-name drug prices through the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) and a long-delayed set of rules that are expected to result in large price reductions, now...

We consider a model where for-profit providers compete in quality in a price-regulated market that has been opened to competition, and where the incumbent is located at the center of the market, facing high costs of relocation. The model is relevant in markets such as public health care,...

Kultur, Verkehr oder öffentliche Daseinsvorsorge: Der Staat nimmt bei einer ganzen Reihe von Produkt- und Dienstleistungsgruppen eine aktive Rolle in der Preisbildung ein. Ohne diese staatliche Einflussnahme auf die Preise wäre der harmonisierte Verbraucherpreisindex am aktuellen Rand ganze...

The paper explores the unique approaches to IP protection in the countries belonging to the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle/African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions; the limited extent to which legal and policy...

We consider a joint inventory and pricing problem with one warehouse and multiple stores, in which the retailer makes a one-time decision on the amount of inventory to be placed at the warehouse at the beginning of the selling season, followed by periodic joint replenishment and pricing...

To prevent firms from manipulating prices, U.S. regulators set price ceilings for open-market share repurchases. We find that market-structure reforms in the 1990s and 2000s dramatically increased share repurchases because they relaxed constraints on issuers seeking to compete with other traders...

Abstract This paper investigates the sensitivity of U.S. economic performance to oil price changes, accounting for changes in the domestic petroleum supply-demand balance over the last decade. A non-linear (asymmetric) autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model is used to estimate the U.S. GDP...

According to economists of the Austrian school, even with everyone’s best efforts, a system based on social ownership of the means of production could not effectively deploy a decentralized price system. The case is made primarily by Mises and Hayek in the 1920s and 1930s with a further...

Price discrimination has raised numerous public concerns and many regulatory agencies have enacted fairness regulations on prices to curb such controversial practices. In this work, we find that, relative to non-regulation, appropriate regulation may alleviate the cut-throat price competition...

War necessitates both allocating real resources to defense and certain interest groups being in favor of the government raising resources to wage war. Price controls can be a tool for governments to mobilize additional resources while buying the support of certain key interest groups, hence...

Abstract: This article discusses the prosecution of excessive pricing cases regarding pharmaceutical products under EU law in its regulatory context. In recent years the legal framework for the pursuit of such cases, based on the United Brands precedent, has been established more firmly. The...

Diesel has the strongest linkages with the economy amongst all petroleum products consumed and a major contributor to inflation and fiscal deficit in India. Therefore, the diesel subsidy reforms implemented since 2012 and the diesel pricing policy implemented since 2014 by the government of...

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...

Fuel prices are commonly perceived to be excessively high, which regularly triggers political discussions about fuel price regulations. Consumers demand stricter fuel price regulations to provide transparency about the current price level and to protect them from sudden price fluctuations. Such...

The roam-like-at-home regulation (RLAH) eliminated all mobile roaming surcharges to Eu-ropean consumers travelling within the European Economic Area (EEA). We measure the causal impact of the regulation on EEA roaming traffic, using the Rest of the World as a control group. We find large and...

The History of Economic Thought as a field has long taken it as a premise that so far as ancient economic thought is concerned, only the Greeks and Romans are worth studying. This paper introduces the Guanzi as a core text in ancient Chinese economic thought on price stabilization from a...

One of the most important variables in the study of the North Korean economy is market prices and foreign exchange rates. This is because of the assumption that the two variables immediately reflect the status and trends of the North Korean economy. In fact, many North Korean economic studies...

The paper explores the unique approaches to IP protection in the countries belonging to the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété Intellectuelle/African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions; the limited extent to which legal and policy...

Environmental pollution, climate warming and other issues have become global issues, and the use of renewable energy as the best way to solve the problem has gradually attracted the attention of all countries. Uncertainty has an important effect on the production of renewable energy. Through a...

Competition law may play an important role in drug pricing control by containing high prices derived from economic violations. Since the use of competition tools is not limited by the TRIPS Agreement or other international binding disciplines, there is ample policy room to explore how countries,...

The regulation of telecommunications, railroads, and other network industries has been based on mandatory unbundling and facilities sharing - entrants have the option to lease part or all of incumbents' facilities if and when they desire, at rates determined by regulators. This flexibility is of...

This paper analyses the welfare effects of price restrictions on private contracting in a world where agents have a limited cognitive ability. People compute the costs and benefits of entering a transaction with an error. The government knows the distribution of true costs and benefits as well...

Launching and stimulating competition in telecommunications markets is an important policy goal. It contains two elements: to encourage entry and to make competition effective such that consumers benefit. The first one requires that entrants can make profits after investing in infrastructure so...

In this paper we study the endogenous determination of monopoly price. Our proposed game of endogenous monopoly-price setting extends the literature on monopoly-price, monopoly rent-seeking contests and monopoly rent-seeking rent-avoidance contests by: (i) Determining the monopoly price such...