Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are exerting growing pressure on firms to eliminate product components (such as palm oil) that are harmful to the environment (such as rainforests) or replace such components with NGO-certified sustainable components. Under which conditions does NGO pressure...

Fortnite is the most successful video game in terms of revenues generated. Since it belongs to the 'free-to-play games', the company has to optimize the in-game-shop to generate revenues. Product dif- ferentiation is one possibility to optimize the profitability of the game. In this paper, we...

Rules of consumer protection or fair competition can be publicly or privately enforced. We consider the possibility of false advertising by a firm in duopolistic competition where consumers can be distinguished according to whether or not they form rational beliefs about the trustworthiness of...

In this article, we provide a novel measure of product differentiation by observing consumer search behavior directly. We track individual consumers in a price search engine and generate a measure of distance in product space, based on goods surveyed conjointly within individual search episodes....

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are exerting growing pressure on firms to eliminate product components (such as palm oil) that are harmful to the environment (such as rainforests) or replace such components with NGO-certified sustainable components. Under which conditions does NGO pressure...

Is green consumerism beneficial to the environment and the economy? To shed light on this question, we study the political economy of environmental regulations in a model with neutral and green consumers where the latter derive some warm glow from buying a good of higher environmental quality...

Much significant research has been done to shed light on discrimination of females in, for example, labor markets. Less is known, in contrast, about the amount of discrimination in the virtual world of online gaming. In an early study, Castronova (2004) finds that female avatars receive about...

Can being innovative help firms to shield themselves from the disruptive effects of a recession? Using data for Spanish manufacturing firms, this paper finds that innovative firms suffered considerably less compared to noninnovative firms during the Great Recession. The operating mechanism for...

This article investigates the relationship between income inequality and firms' locations and product choices. Using detailed information on income at a regionally disaggregated level and individual data on Austrian restaurants, we demonstrate that firm conduct crucially depends on the...

Product proliferation occurs in supply chains to produce diverse products from a limited variety of raw materials. In such a setting, manufacturers can establish market responsiveness and/or cost efficiency in alternative ways. Delaying the point of the proliferation helps manufacturers improve...

Our novel approach to modeling monopolistic competition with heterogeneous consumers involves a space of characteristics of a differentiated good (consumers' ideal points), alike Hotelling (1929). Firms have heterogeneous costs à la Melitz (2003). In addition to price setting, each firm also...

This article focuses on the optimal international trade policy considered product differentiations. A duopoly model with a home firm in a developing country and a foreign firm in a developed country is established. The findings indicate that, the optimal tariff relies on the product...

In his groundbreaking work Sources of Innovation, Eric von Hippel discussed from where in (and out of) the value-chain innovations came in different industries: the customer, the manufacturer, the supplier, or third-party innovator (universities, research laboratories, etc.). The world has...

This article investigates the relationship between income inequality and firms' locations and product choices. Using detailed information on income at a regionally disaggregated level and individual data on Austrian restaurants, we demonstrate that firm conduct crucially depends on the...

Much significant research has been done to shed light on discrimination of females in, for example, labor markets. Less is known, in contrast, about the amount of discrimination in the virtual world of online gaming. In an early study, Castronova (2004) finds that female avatars receive about...

This paper examines the effect of imperfect labor market competition on the efficiency of compensation schemes in a setting with moral hazard and risk-averse agents who have private information on their ability. Two heterogenous firms - characterized by vertical, respectively horizontal,...

Is green consumerism beneficial to the environment and the economy? To shed light on this question, we study the political economy of environmental regulations in a model with neutral and green consumers where the latter derive some warm glow from buying a good of higher environmental quality...

This article investigates the relationship between income inequality and firms' locations and product choices. Using detailed information on income at a regionally disaggregated level and individual data on Austrian restaurants, we demonstrate that firm conduct crucially depends on the...

Can being innovative help firms to shield themselves from the disruptive effects of a recession? Using data for Spanish manufacturing firms, this paper finds that innovative firms suffered considerably less compared to noninnovative firms during the Great Recession. The operating mechanism for...

The paper discusses the economic aspects of the most important questions (such as demand response or capacity allocation) related to differential pricing. First, we consider a revenue-neutral introduction of peak-load pricing. We examine under what circumstances does peak-load pricing lead to a...

This paper investigates the impact of product differentiation on firm‐specific and industry‐wide cost pass‐through in grocery retailing. We use attribute distance measures to model product differentiation based on a unique set of retail scanner data for ready‐to‐eat soup products in...

Rules of consumer protection or fair competition can be publicly or privately enforced. We consider the possibility of false advertising by a firm in duopolistic competition where consumers can be distinguished according to whether or not they form rational beliefs about the trustworthiness of...

We estimate the variety gains of trade in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania following the fall of the iron curtain more than a quarter of a century ago. We apply the methodology of Feenstra (1994); Broda and Weinstein (2006); Ardelean and Lugovskyy (2010) and Soderbery (2015) to domestic and...

Theoretical literature states that intra-industry trade (IIT) should be divided into horizontal and vertical flows (or trade in products with homogeneous and heterogeneous quality) that are influenced by different factors. Yet, the economists are still not sure about the proportion between...

Two insurance companies I 1 ,I 2 with reserves R 1 (t),R 2 (t) compete for customers, such that in a suitable differential game the smaller company I 2 with R 2 (0)<R 1 (0) aims at minimizing R 1 (t)−R 2 (t) by using the premium p 2 as control and the larger I 1 at maximizing by using p 1. Deductibles K 1 ,K 2 are fixed but may be different. If K 1 >K 2 and I 2 is the leader choosing its premium first, conditions for Stackelberg equilibrium are established. For gamma-distributed...</r>

Technical improvements in the sustainability of wine making will likely proceed thorough a progressive refinement of processing strategies without substantial discontinuities. The new varieties obtained through interspecific crossings represent a new technological paradigm with remarkable...

This paper documents the importance of consumer taste in trade flows using Belgian firm-product customs data by destination. We identify consumer taste through the use of a control function approach and estimate it jointly with other demand parameters using a very flexible demand specification....

We analyze the effects of consumers' limited attention on welfare in a model of horizontal product differentiation. We present a novel approach of modeling limited attention: an attention radius. Each consumer only notices goods that are within her attention radius, i.e., goods that are...