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Motivated by current topics in health economics, we apply the theory of salience to consumer policy. If a government intends to stifle healthier diets without harming consumers by raising taxes, it could initiate information campaigns which focus consumers' attention either on the healthiness of one item or the unhealthiness of the other item. According to our approach, both campaigns work, but it is more efficient to proclaim the unhealthiness of one product in order to present it as a "bad." Our findings imply that comparative advertisement is particularly efficient for entrant firms into established markets.

We provide a novel intuition for the observation that many brand manufacturers have restricted their retailers' ability to resell brand products online. Our approach builds on models of salience according to which price disparities across distribution channels guide a consumer's attention toward prices and lower her appreciation for quality. Thus, absent vertical restraints, one out of two distortions – a quality or a participation distortion – can arise in equilibrium. The quality distortion occurs if the manufacturer provides either an inefficiently low quality under price salience or an inefficiently high quality in order to prevent price salience. The participation distortion arises as offline sales might be entirely abandoned in order to prevent prices from becoming salient. Both distortions are ruled out if vertical restraints are imposed. As opposed to the current EU legislation that considers a range of vertical restraints as being hardcore restrictions of competition, we show that these constraints can be socially desirable if salience effects are taken into account.

We provide a novel intuition for the observation that many brand manufacturers have restricted their retailers' ability to resell brand products online. Our approach builds on models of salience according to which price disparities across distribution channels guide a consumer's attention toward prices and lower her appreciation for quality. Thus, absent vertical restraints, one out of two distortions - a quality or a participation distortion - can arise in equilibrium. The quality distortion occurs if the manufacturer provides either an inefficiently low quality under price salience or an inefficiently high quality in order to prevent price salience. The participation distortion arises as offline sales might be entirely abandoned in order to prevent prices from becoming salient. Both distortions are ruled out if vertical restraints are imposed. As opposed to the current EU legislation that considers a range of vertical restraints as being hardcore restrictions of competition per se, we show that these constraints can be socially desirable if salience effects are taken into account.

We analyze evidence production in merger control as a delegation problem under an inquisitorial and an adversarial competition policy system. Agents' incentives to produce evidence depend critically on the action set of the decision maker. In an inquisitorial system, allowing ex ante for a compromising remedy reduces incentives when compared with the case in which the merger can be either approved or prohibited. In an adversarial system, no such unambiguous results can be derived because the remedial option is never a best-fit for one of the parties. Comparison of both systems reveals that an adversarial system creates larger incentives when the conflict of interest between the involved parties is large. We relate our results to merger control in the US and the EU.

We investigate how remedies in merger control affect information acquisition by an antitrust agency. We identify conditions under which an ''extreme options'' regime which does not allow for remedies improves information acquisition by the agency which increases consumer surplus. The legislator (''principal'') and the agency share the same objective function with the only exception that the latter must bear information costs. When remedies are not feasible, then the agency's incentive to acquire information is relatively large as a false decision tends to have large adverse effects. When remedies are feasible, the intermediate option does not involve such risks, so that incentives to acquire information decreases. However, our results depend crucially on the institutional environment. In the case of an adversial system, information acquisition incentives are not per se lower if remedies are feasible.