duopoly supergames with product differentiation abstract when goods are complements or very close substitutes more tacit collusion is supported by trigger strategies in price setting supergames than in quantity setting supergames for moderate or poor substitutes the situation is reversed this contrasts with the static situation where price setting strategies always lead to higher welfare

credit constraints equity market liberalizations and international trade abstract this paper provides evidence that credit constraints are an important determinant of international trade flows i exploit shocks to the availability of external finance and examine the impact of equity market liberalizations on the export behavior of 91 countries in the 1980 1997 period i show that liberalizations increase exports disproportionately more in financially vulnerable sectors that require more outside finance or employ fewer collateralizable assets this result is not driven by cross country differences in factor endowments and is independent of simultaneous trade policy reforms moreover it obtains with equal strength in the full panel of countries as well as in both panel and event study analyses of countries which removed capital controls during the sample period finally the effects of liberalizations are more pronounced in economies with initially less active stock markets indicating that foreign equity flows may substitute for an underdeveloped domestic financial system similarly opening equity markets has a greater impact in the presence of higher trade costs caused by restrictive trade policies

vertical antitrust policy as a problem of inference the legality of nonprice vertical practices in the u s is determined by their likely competitive effects an optimal enforcement rule combines evidence with theory to update prior beliefs and specifies a decision that minimizes the expected loss because the welfare effects of vertical practices are theoretically ambiguous optimal decisions depend heavily on prior beliefs which should be guided by empirical evidence empirically vertical restraints appear to reduce price and or increase output thus absent a good natural experiment to evaluate a particular restraint s effect an optimal policy places a heavy burden on plaintiffs to show that a restraint is anticompetitive

capacity constraints mergers and collusion abstract the objective of this paper is two fold to contribute to the analysis of tacit collusion in bertrand supergames with asymmetric capacity constraints and from a more applied perspective to bring a new light on merger analysis and provide useful guidelines for competition policy taking into account dynamic aspects of competition it is well known that capacity constraints affect tacit collusion as they limit both incentives to deviate e g to undercut rivals and retaliation possibilities however most studies have so far focused on symmetric situations where all firms have the same capacity which leads to ambiguous and unintuitive results and also considerably limits the scope of application studying asymmetric situations makes it possible to analyse the impact of changes in the distribution of these capacities expansions but also mergers split offs transfers etc and to provide guidelines for competition policy and particularly for merger policy these guidelines which differ substantially from those inspired by more static analyses such as the herfindahl or other standard concentration tests are applied to a famous merger that took place in the french bottled water market the nestle perrier merger case

interest rate restrictions in a natural experiment loan allocation and the change in the usury laws in 1714 this article studies the effects of interest rate restrictions on loan allocation the british government tightened the usury laws in 1714 reducing the maximum permissible interest rate from 6 to 5 a sample of individual loan transactions reveals that average loan size and minimum loan size increased strongly while access to credit worsened for those with little social capital collateralised credits which had accounted for a declining share of total lending returned to their former role of prominence our results suggest that the usury laws distorted credit markets significantly we find no evidence that they offered a form of pareto improving social insurance almost since the beginning of recorded history usury restrictions have been widely used the laws of hammurabi from the 2nd millennium bc regulated interest rates as did the old testament and the catholic church while early rules often outlawed the taking of interest altogether later restrictions stipulated maximum permissible interest rates to the present day many developing and islamic countries and us states impose limits on private loan contracts to stamp out predatory lending by credit sharks only recently italy re introduced a law against usurious credit contracts glaeser and scheinkman 1998 blitz and long 1965 homer and sylla 1996 the effects of usury regulation have remained controversial numerous scholars have argued that they had damaging consequences and that this conclusion applies to both

vertical foreclosure with the choice of input specifications we develop an equilibrium model of vertical foreclosure with the choice of input specifications vertical foreclosure occurs as the upstream division of the integrated firm makes a specialized input for its sister downstream division while it would as an independent firm provide a generalized input the changes in incentives with vertical integration can be explained by the externalities the choice of a specialized input entails vertical integration allows the upstream firm to internalize the benefit of raising the rival firm s costs at the downstream level we derive conditions for equilibrium vertical foreclosure to occur and discuss its welfare consequences

exclusive territories and manufacturers collusion this paper highlights the rationale for exclusive territories in a model of repeated interaction between competing supply chains we show that with observable contracts exclusive territories have two countervailing effects on manufacturers incentives to sustain tacit collusion first granting local monopolies to retailers softens competition in a one shot game hence punishment profits are larger thereby rendering deviation more profitable second exclusive territories stifle deviation profits because retailers of competing brands adjust their prices to the wholesale contract offered by a deviant manufacturer whereas intrabrand competition prevents such instantaneous reaction we show that the latter effect tends to dominate thereby making exclusive territories a more suitable organizational mode to cooperate these insights are robust to endogenous communication between manufacturers we also consider retailers service investments here a novel effect emerges that softens the procollusive value of exclusive territories retailers of a deviant manufacturer increase investments which renders deviation more profitable this paper was accepted by preyas desai marketing

bertrand vs cournot competition in distribution channels with upstream collusion abstract this paper applies repeated game theory to tacit collusion in dynamic distribution channels based on the grim trigger strategy we examine competitors choice of the strategic instruments in distribution channels comprised of two manufacturers distributing through two independent retailers respectively first the paper discusses the upstream manufacturers collusion incentives under different competition modes for downstream retailers and shows that the manufacturers collusion incentives critically depend on the retailers competition modes and the discount factor we then identify the endogenous competition modes in equilibrium we find that upstream collusion is easier to sustain under cournot competition than bertrand competition and it is least likely to be sustained under mixed bertrand cournot competition furthermore in equilibrium retailers can engage in bertrand cournot or mixed bertrand cournot competition depending on the discount factor and the degree of product differentiation this study provides the rationale behind the emergence of various modes of competition in practical dynamic distribution channels especially the recent mixed bertrand cournot competition mode finally the manufacturers collusion incentives and retailers competition modes jointly affect the manufacturers profitability and social welfare we also discuss how the manufacturers profitability and social welfare vary under different competition modes taking upstream collusion into consideration we find that upstream collusion increases decreases social welfare for complements substitutes

democratization contracts and comparative advantage abstract we study how the international spread of democracy shaped the comparative advantage of countries using data on the third wave of democratization between 1976 and 2000 we find that democratizing countries shifted their exports towards more contract intensive goods that require a larger portion of relationship specific inputs this shift is observed on the intensive margin volumes of industry level exports as well as the extensive margin of trade number of goods a country exports using an instrumental variable strategy based on democracy waves alternative proxy variables and subsamples suggests that the effects of democratization on trade specialization are causal

debt sustainability in historical perspective the role of fiscal repression this article examines the debt history of two contenders for european hegemony 16th century spain and 18th century britain we analyze their fiscal behavior using measures of overborrowing and fiscal policy functions our results suggest that stringency was not key for britain s success in avoiding default instead fiscal repression allowed the united kingdom to borrow at below market rates thereby outspending its continental rivals jel e4 f41 n23

a bargaining theory of distribution channels abstract a critical factor in channel relationships between manufacturers and retailers is the relative bargaining power of both parties in this article the authors develop a framework to examine bargaining between channel members and demonstrate that the bargaining process actually affects the degree of coordination and that two part tariffs will not be part of the market contract even in a simple one manufacturer one retailer channel to establish the institutional and theoretical bases for these results the authors relax the conventional assumption that the product being exchanged is completely specifiable in a contract they show that the institution of bargaining has force and it affects channel coordination when the complexity of nonspecifiability of the product exchange is present the authors find that greater retailer power promotes channel coordination thus there are conditions in which the presence of a powerful retailer might actually be beneficial to all channel members the authors rec

vertical integration raising rivals costs and upstream collusion abstract this paper analyzes the impact vertical integration has on upstream collusion when the price of the input is linear as a first step the paper derives the collusive equilibrium that requires the lowest discount factor in the infinitely repeated game when one firm is vertically integrated it turns out this is the joint profit maximum of the colluding firms the discount factor needed to sustain this equilibrium is then shown to be unambiguously lower than the one needed for collusion in the separated industry while the previous literature has found it difficult to reconcile raising rivals costs strategies following a vertical merger with equilibrium behavior in the static game they are subgame perfect in the repeated game studied here

vertical integration and downstream collusion we investigate the effect of a vertical merger on downstream firms ability to collude in a repeated game framework we show that a vertical merger has two main effects on the one hand it increases the total collusive profits increasing the stakes of collusion on the other hand it creates an asymmetry between the integrated firm and the unintegrated competitors the integrated firm accessing the input at marginal cost faces higher profits in the deviation phase and in the non cooperative equilibrium which potentially harms collusion as we show the optimal collusive profit sharing agreement takes care of the increased incentive to deviate of the integrated firm while optimal punishment erases the difficulty related to the asymmetries in the non cooperative state as a result vertical integration generally favors collusion

multimarket contact and collusive behavior traditional analyses of industrial behavior typically link the exercise of market power in an industry to internalfeatures such as demand conditions concentration and barriers to entry nevertheless some economists have remained concerned that external factors such as contact across markets may also play a significant role in determining the level of competitiveness in any particular industry in this article we examine the effect of multimarket contact on the degree of cooperation that firms can sustain in settings of repeated competition we isolate conditions under which multimarket contact facilitates collusion and show that these collusive gains are achieved through modes of behavior that have been identified in previous empirical studies of multimarketfirms

government spending interest rates prices and budget deficits in the united kingdom 1701 1918 abstract the british data from the early 1700s through wwi provide an unmatched opportunity for studying temporary changes in government purchases temporary increases which appeared mainly as wartime spending raised long term interest rates but significantly increased the growth rates of money and prices only during suspensions of the gold standard 1797 1821 and 1914 1918 temporary changes in military spending accounted for the bulk of budget deficits over the sample of more than 200 years i found only two major non war deficits one associated with compensation payments to slaveowners in 1835 1936 and the other with a dispute over the income tax in 1909 1910 interest rates did not react much to these exogenous deficits

democratisation and growth this article challenges cross sectional findings that democracy has a negligible effect on growth we employ a new dataset of political transitions during the third wave of democratisation and examine the within effect of democratisation in countries that abandoned autocracy and consolidated representative institutions the panel estimates imply that on average democratisations are associated with a 1 increase in annual per capita growth the dynamic analysis reveals that while during the transition growth is slow in the medium and long run it stabilises at a higher level this evidence favours development theories of democratic rule and friedrich hayek 1960 s idea that the merits of democracy appear in the long run leading politicians and commentators have argued that democratisation will bring prosperity and growth into pariah and economically poorly performing countries 1 others however remain sceptical pointing to the mixed and inconclusive empirical evidence the old debate dating back to plato and aristotle on which political regime is socially and economically optimal arises again this debate is not purely academic and philosophical as it has important policy implications in the last thirty years the world has experienced an unprecedented move towards democratic institutions influential policy makers and scholars urge western authorities to foster democratic movements in totalitarian countries see the economist article philosophers and kings june 19th 2003 yet the question remains will democratisation bring economic growth to assess the average growth effect of a successful democratic transition we analyse the evolution of annual real per capita gdp growth before and after incidents of permanent democratic reform in the 1960 2003 period in our analysis we exploit a newly constructed dataset of permanent democratisations during the so called third wave of democratisation and the 1990s when many former socialist countries moved towards representative rule the panel results reveal new evidence that contrast with the previous mainly cross sectional work first conditioning on time invariant country characteristics and global shocks a permanent democratisation is associated with approximately a one half to one per cent increment in annual real per capita gdp growth second a dynamic j shaped effect emerges with considerable though not this article is a major revision of an earlier paper titled aristotle was right stable democracy fosters

equilibrium vertical foreclosure the authors formulate a complete but analytically simple equilibrium model of vertical mergers to evaluate the logic of standard vertical foreclosure claims and the criticisms made of those claims the model includes incentives of the integrated firm and unintegrated input suppliers to exclude rivals and the potential holdout problem in this fully specified model vertical foreclosure can emerge in equilibrium copyright 1990 by american economic association

vertical mergers and market foreclosure ythe model in this paper illustrates three effects of vertical mergers when both stages are oligopolistic and vertically integrated and unintegrated producers coexist first the merging firm increases its final good output second the resulting backward shift in the residual demand curve facing unintegrated final good producers ylowers their demand for the intermediate good third the merged firm withdraws from the intermediate good market the increased concentration pushes the intermediate good price upward which effect dominates depends on market structure under some conditions a vertical merger causes the price of the final good to increase

state capacity and military conflict powerful centralized states controlling a large share of national income only begin to appear in europe after 1500 we build a model that explains their emergence in response to the increasing importance of money for military success when fiscal resources are not crucial for winning wars the threat of external conflict stifles state building as finance becomes critical internally cohesive states invest in state capacity while divided states rationally drop out of the competition causing divergence we emphasize the role of the military revolution a sequence of technological innovations that transformed armed conflict using data from 374 battles we investigate empirically both the importance of money for military success and patterns of state building in early modern europe the evidence is consistent with the predictions of our model

vertical integration as a source of hold up while vertical integration is traditionally seen as a solution to the hold up problem this article highlights instead that it can generate hold up problems for rivals we consider a successive duopoly where downstream firms invest and then secure support from an upstream supplier we first show that vertical integration generates ex ante incentives to create hold up problems an integrated supplier is willing to pre commit itself to appropriating or dissipating part of its customer s profits to expose the independent rival to being held up by the other supplier and discourage in this way the rival s investment we then show that even in the absence of any pre commitment vertical integration also creates hold up problems ex post when degrading the quality of the support provided to one downstream firm benefits its rival we also provide illustrations in terms of standard industrial organization models and of antitrust cases and discuss the robustness of the insights

incomplete contracts vertical integration and supply assurance this paper extends the analysis of transactions cost models of vertical integration to multilateral settings its main focus is on supply assurance concerns which arise when several downstream firms are competing for inputs in limited supply integration reduces supply assurance concerns for an integrating firm but it may increase them for others therefore to explain the scope of any firm one must consider the overall network of production and distribution relations three fundamental questions are addressed 1 what are the effects of different integration structures 2 what are the determinants of the socially efficient integration structures 3 in what way do equilibrium integration structures differ from socially efficient structures

incentives for input foreclosure we analyze the incentives of a vertically integrated firm to foreclose downstream rivals in contrast to the extant literature our model allows for upstream price competition between suppliers of only imperfectly substitutable inputs as the integrated firm decides on the degree of foreclosure through the scale of its continued participation in a merchant market the model can be applied also to cases where the foreclosed input is not essential as well as to cases where foreclosure is not complete we find that incentives to foreclose are much lower than in existing models with upstream cournot competition if there is also cournot competition downstream there will never be complete foreclosure in the case of linear demand potentially more important for practical purposes is our criticism of some explicit assertions made in the european commission s 2007 non horizontal merger guidelines we find that pre merger margins on the up and downstream markets are not necessarily good predictors of the incentives for subsequent i e post merger foreclosure

do vertical mergers facilitate upstream collusion we investigate the impact of vertical mergers on upstream firms ability to collude when selling to downstream firms in a repeated game we show that vertical mergers give rise to an outlets effect the deviation profits of cheating unintegrated firms are reduced as these firms can no longer profitably sell to the downstream affiliates of their integrated rivals vertical mergers also result in an opposing punishment effect integrated firms typically make more profit in the punishment phase than unintegrated upstream firms the net result of these effects in an unintegrated industry is to facilitate upstream collusion we provide conditions under which further vertical integration also facilitates collusion

anticompetitive vertical integration by a dominant firm backward vertical integration by a dominant firm into an upstream competitive industry causes both input and output prices to rise the dominant firm s advantage may or may not offset the negative effect of higher prices on social welfare whether it does depends on a simple indicator derived from input and output market shares and the degree of prior vertical integration a vertical merger is similar to a hypothetical horizontal merger suggesting that vertical merger policy for this industry should be similar to horizontal merger policy the dominant firm model yields an observable sufficient indicator of welfare improving vertical mergers copyright 1998 by american economic association

equilibrium vertical foreclosure reply in ordover saloner and salop 1990 hereafter oss we showed that a downstream duopolist may have an incentive to backward integrate in order to foreclose its downstream rival from a source of upstream supply as a result of the vertical integration the downstream rival s input price increases giving the integrating firm a competitive advantage in the downstream market moreover in equilibrium the foreclosed downstream rival does not find it profitable to negate these effects by integrating itself oss considers a four stage game involving two upstream firms ul and u2 and two downstream firms dl and d2 in the first stage the downstream firms can bid to acquire ul if there is an acquisition say dl acquires ul to form f1 upstream input prices are set in the second stage in the third stage knowing the input prices it faces d2 can attempt to acquire u2 finally in the fourth stage dl and d2 compete a la bertrand with differentiated products in his comment david reiffen 1992 makes three distinct points first he notes that once dl has acquired ul the equilibrium of the subsequent subgame depends critically on how upstream prices are set in the second stage he argues that our results depend on the ability of fl to commit to a high upstream price this criticism previously has been made by oliver hart and jean tirole 1990 we show below that the results in oss do not depend on the ability of fl to commit instead our main result stems from the fact that vertical integration changes the firm s incentives to engage in price cutting in the input market the notion that vertically integrated firms behave differently from unintegrated ones in supplying inputs to downstream rivals would strike a businessperson if not an economist as common sense 1 we show that there is theoretical merit to that common sense view second reiffen argues that the game considered by oss is similar to a game in which there is no vertical integration but rather where a nonintegrated dl has a first mover advantage in the downstream market in such a game dl benefits from the ability to commit to the price that its stackelberg leadership position gives it reiffen considers this to be additional evidence in support of the claim that oss depends critically on fl s ability to commit not on vertical integration we explain why the mechanism by which dl is able to raise its profits in the sequential one shot game considered by reiffen is conceptually quite different from the mechanism by which dl profits from vertical integration in oss third reiffen argues that our results depend on there being only two upstream firms this is correct in the symmetric bertrand model analyzed however as we discuss below our results do obtain as long as the upstream price is decreasing in the number of firms as occurs in many oligopoly models particularly when costs vary across firms the next section summarizes the conceptual problems pertaining to upstream pricing these problems are resolved in section ii by means of simple and natural price ordover department of economics new york university 269 mercer st 7th floor new york ny 10003 saloner graduate school of business stanford university stanford ca 94305 salop georgetown university law center 600 new jersey avenue nw washington dc 20001 we have benefited greatly from several discussions with faruk gul research support from the national science foundation grant 8813943 iri the sloan foundation and the c v starr center for applied economics at nyu is gratefully acknowledged for example the japan u s strategic impediments initiative is predicated on the proposition that the loosely linked japanese firms that form the various keiretsu do discriminate against nonaffiliated firms