Price Competition under Limited Comparability

This paper studies market competition when firms can influence consumers' ability to compare market alternatives, through their choice of price "formats". We introduce random graphs as a tool for modelling limited comparability of formats. Our main results concern the interaction between firms' equilibrium price and format decisions and its implications for industry profits and consumer switching rates. We show that narrow regulatory interventions that aim to facilitate comparisons may have adverse consequences for consumer welfare. Finally, we argue that our limited-comparability approach provides a new perspective into the phenomenon of product differentiation.price competition, industrial organization, limited comparability, bounded rationality, framing, consumer protection, product differentiation, complexity

Competition, innovation and growth with limited commitment

We study how barriers to business start-up affect the investment in knowledge capital when contracts are not enforceable. Barriers to business start-up lower the competition for knowledge capital and, in absence of commitment, reduce the incentive to accumulate knowledge. As a result, countries with large barriers experience lower income and growth. Our results are consistent with cross-country evidence showing that the cost of business start-up is negatively correlated with the level and growth of income.Innovation, Knowledge Capital, Enforcement, Growth, Competition, Commitment, Recursive Contracts, Mobility

Competition, Human Capital and Income Inequality with Limited Commitment

We develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with two-sided limited commitment to study how barriers to competition, such as restrictions to business start-up, affect the incentive to accumulate human capital. We show that a lack of contract enforceability amplifies the effect of barriers to competition on human capital accumulation. High barriers reduce the incentive to accumulate human capital by lowering the outside value of ‘skilled workers’, while low barriers can result in over-accumulation of human capital. This over-accumulation can be socially optimal if there are positive knowledge spillovers. A calibration exercise shows that this mechanism can account for significant cross-country income inequality.Limited commitment, limited enforcement, human capital accumulation, income inequality, innovation, barriers to competition.

Risk Taking, Limited Liability and the Competition of Bank Regulators

Limited liability and asymmetric information between an investment bank and its lenders provide an incentive for a bank to undercapitalise and finance overly risky business projects. To counter this market failure, national governments have imposed solvency constraints on banks. However, these constraints may not survive in systems competition, as systems competition is likely to suffer from the same type of information asymmetry which induced the private market failure and which brought in the government in the first place (Selection Principle). As national solvency regulation creates a positive international policy externality on foreign lenders of domestic banks, there will be an undersupply of such regulation. This may explain why Asian banks were undercapitalised and took excessive risks before the banking crisis emerged.

Indicators of weed competition on Organic Winter Wheat

Organic winter wheat production is limited by climatic and agronomic factors, including weed competition. The incidence of weeds on yield limitation can be characterized through various early indicators to predict weed occurrence and competition. A network of 10 fields of organic winter wheat was implemented in the South East of France in 2005-2006. Results showed that weed density, dynamics and diversity are good indicators for weed occurrence and competition

Review: Electronic Music, Vol. III, Música Viva Competition Prize Winners 2004—2005—2006

This collection, the third in a series from Miso Records in Portugal, collates the prizewinners of the Música Viva Competition from 2004 to 2006. The competition has assumed increasing importance on the international circuit, with 2006 being the seventh year it has been held. Entry to the competition is limited to composers under the age of 35. The last few years has attracted an average of 120 applicants from a range of nationalities

Towards a Differentiated Analysis of Competition of Competition Laws

Can "competition of competition laws" be a feasible concept that should play an important role in an international order for the worldwide protection of competition? We introduce four different types of regulatory competition that allow for a more differentiated analysis of beneficial and deficient effects of competition of competition laws. Our analysis shows that most types of regulatory competition have a rather limited scope for application to competition laws. However, yardstick competition can be very promising and represents a powerful argument against centralisation. An important result of our analysis is that the institutional framework of any competition of competition laws plays a crucial role for its workability.

Competition Reduces X-Inefficiency - A note on a Limited Liability Mechanism

The study illustrates that a financial restriction may serve as a disciplining device on the internal efficiency of a firm, and that the disciplining power is higher the tougher the product market competition is. The financial restriction is modeled as a limited liability constraint, that is a non-negative profit constraint. Hence, this limited liability mechanism may, in part, account for the disciplining power of product market competition on firm efficiency, alleged by policy makers as well as economists.financial restriction; efficiency of a firm; disciplining power

Blind protein structure prediction using accelerated free-energy simulations.

We report a key proof of principle of a new acceleration method [Modeling Employing Limited Data (MELD)] for predicting protein structures by molecular dynamics simulation. It shows that such Boltzmann-satisfying techniques are now sufficiently fast and accurate to predict native protein structures in a limited test within the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) community-wide blind competition