Economic integration and environmental policy coordination

We analyse the effect of international economic integration on environmental policy incentives when product markets are characterised by imperfect competition and national policy makers act strategically. If traditional trade policy instruments are not available, environmental policies will typically be determined by the interaction of conflicting policy incentives. We find that economic integration — interpreted as a reduction of non-tariff trade costs — will reduce policy distortions in the non-cooperative policy game if the marginal social cost of pollution is increasing at a sufficiently low rate. In this case, it follows that increased integration reduces the need for transnational policy coordination, from an environmentalist perspective.Economic integration; Strategic environmental policy; Policy coordination.

Managerial delegation and merger incentives

We analyse how the internal organisation of firms affects the correspondence between private and social incentives for horizontal merger. Applying a model of endogenous merger formation in a three-firm asymmetric Cournot industry, we contrast the cases of entrepreneurial and managerial firms. The use of strategic delegation increases both the probability that a merger takes place and the likelihood that the ‘wrong’ type of merger is undertaken, from a viewpoint of social welfare. This suggests that managerial delegation increases the scope for antitrust policy.Managerial delegation; Endogenous mergers; Cost asymmetry; Antitrust policy.

Rent-seeking in a unionised monopoly

A unionised monopoly firm, benefitting from some kind of anti-competitive regulation, and its corresponding trade union have a common interest in spending resources to protect the monopoly rents created by the regulation. In the present paper, a situation in which the unionised monopoly is challenged by a consumer organisation fighting for deregulation is analysed as a standard Tullock rent-seeking contest. With unequal sharing of monopoly rents, the free-riding incentives among the rent-defending players turn out to be overwhelming, in the sense that the unique Nash equilibrium is characterised by zero effort contribution by the player with the lower valuation of the contested prize. This implies that being "strong", in terms of bargaining strength, is not necessarily an advantage for neither player in a unionised monopoly that is threatened by deregulation

Product market integration and environmental policy coordination in an international duopoly

We analyse the effect of product market integration on environmental policy incentives in an international duopoly, where national policy makers act strategically. If traditional trade policy instruments are not available, environmental policies will typically be determined by the interaction of conflicting policy incentives. Contrary to popular belief, we find that international product market integration, in this particular setting, might reduce the need for transnational policy coordination, both from a purely environmental and from a social welfare perspective

International mergers and trade liberalisation : implications for unionised labour

An international oligopoly model with unionised and non-unionised firms is constructed to make predictions about the pattern of international mergers. Applying the method of endogenous merger formation developed by Horn and Persson [International Journal of Industrial Organisation 19 (2001) 1213] we find that the equilibrium market structure is highly dependent on the level of trade costs. The model is further utilised to analyse the implications of trade liberalisation for unionised labour. A main finding is that, for sufficiently high levels of trade costs, unionised workers may benefit from a merger between non-unionised firms, whereas low levels of trade costs make unionised firms highly ‘vulnerable’ to an international merger, which could be detrimental to the union’s ability to capture oligopoly rents.Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration - (SNF

Union collusion and intra-industry trade

This paper analyses the scope for collusive behaviour within the context of an international duopoly supergame in which both firms and monopoly labour unions interact strategically. We find that the presence of unions, implying an endogenisation of production costs, dramatically alters the incentives for inter-firm collusion. There are, however, strong incentives for the unions to collude, raising the wage above the equilibrium level of the one-shot game. We propose two candidates for a Nash equilibrium of the supergame, in both of which the unions collude. The main result of the paper is that the presence of unions could actually promote intra-industry trade as an equilibrium outcome of the infinitely repeated game

Outsourcing in Contests

We study ex post outsourcing of production in an imperfectly discriminating contest, interpreted here as a research tournament or a procurement contest for being awarded some production contract. We find that the possibility of outsourcing increases competition between the contestants, leading to higher total contest effort, unless the ex-post bargaining strength of the contest winner is sufficiently low and/or there are very few contestants. However, even in the case of two contestants, outsourcing reduces the procurement costs of inducing a given level of effort if the contest organizer can collect entry fees. With respect to contest design, this suggests that outsourcing should generally be allowed if the objective is to induce stronger competition.contests, outsourcing, bargaining, contest design

Merger, partial collusion and relocation

We set up a three-firm model of spatial competition to analyse how a merger affects the incentives for relocation, and conversely, how the possibility of relocation affects the profitability of the merger, particularly for the non-participating firm. The analysis is carried out for the assumptions of both mill pricing and price discrimination, and we also consider the case of partial collusion. For the case of mill pricing, a merger will generally induce the merger participants to relocate, but the direction of relocation is ambiguous, and dependent on the degree of convexity in the consumers’ transportation cost function. We also identify a set of parameter values for which the free-rider effect of a merger vanishes, implying that the possibility of relocation could solve the ‘merger paradox’, even in the absence of price discrimination.Spatial competition; Merger; Relocation; Partial collusion.

Globalization, Product Differentiation and Wage Inequality

This paper develops a two-country, general equilibrium model of oligopoly in which the degree of horizontal product differentiation is endogenously determined by rms’ strategic investments in product innovation. Consumers seek variety and product innovation is more skill intensive than production. Stronger import competition increases innovation incentives, and thereby the relative demand for skill. An intraindustry trade expansion following trade liberalization can therefore increase wage inequality between skilled and unskilled workers. In addition, since product differentiation is resource consuming, freer trade entails a potential trade-off between production and variety. The import competition effect highlighted by the model, which plays a key role in determining the general equilibrium, is consistent with panel data on Chilean manufacturing plants.Trade liberalization, Product differentiation, Innovation,Wage inequality, General oligopolistic equilibrium

Outsourcing in Contests

We study ex post outsourcing of production in an imperfectly discriminating contest, interpreted here as a research tournament or a procurement contest for being awarded some production contract. We find that the possibility of outsourcing increases competition between the contestants, leading to higher total contest effort, unless there are very few contestants and/or the ex-post bargaining strength of the contest winner is sufficiently low. However, even in the case of two contestants, outsourcing reduces the procurement costs of inducing a given level of effort if the contest organizer can collect entry fees. With respect to contest design, this suggests that outsourcing should generally be allowed if the objective is to induce stronger competition.Contests; Outsourcing; Bargaining; Contest design