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This paper investigates the strategic effect of bundling when a multi-product firm producing two complements faces competition in both markets. I consider a demand structure where both Cournot and Bertrand competition can be evaluated. Bundling is completely ineffective when firms compete in quantities. On the contrary, under Bertrand competition, selling the two goods in a package is profitable when the goods produced by the rivals are perceived as close substitutes to those produced by the multi-product firm. Bundling drives prices up, and not only consumer surplus, but also social welfare shrinks, thus calling for the intervention of the antitrust agency.

We study complementarity between product and process innovation in a monopoly setting. First we consider the possibility for the firm to alternatively invest only along one of the two directions and compare the incentives of process vs product innovation. Then we allow the firm to invest simultaneously in both activities, showing that both investment levels as well as the profit are higher than in case of individual investment. Product and process innovations are then complementary and the firm always prefers a simultaneous adoption.

In this paper I will evaluate the role of R&D investment in transport and communication in a duopoly with trade. I will in fact consider the strategic behavior of two firms located in two different countries. They can activate R&D investments in order to improve the technology of the transportation process. Transport and communication (TC) costs are of iceberg type, i.e. only a fraction of the goods shipped abroad reaches the foreign market. I will then study a game in which firms may priorly commit themselves to a certain level of R&D investment and then they play in the market. As for the marketgame, I will consider both a Cournot duopoly with homogeneous products and a Bertrand duopoly with differentiated goods. In both models, my analysis suggests that firms are willing to invest in transport and communication technology when such a strategy yurns out to be efficient, i.e. when it does not imply an excessive cost. More precisely, a variety of equilibria will aarise as a result of different levels of TC r&D efficiency. If the cost is low the game has an equilibrium in dominant strategies where both firms invest in TC and maximize the aggregate profit. As the cost increases, the game becomes a prisoner`s dilemma; both firms still invest in Tc but they do not reach the Pareto-efficient solution. For even higher levels of the cost required, the game shows an equilibrium in dominant strategies where no firms finances TC R&D and the aggregate profit is maximized.

In this paper I will evaluate the strategic behavior of two firms which can activate R&D investments either to process or to product innovation. I will consider a particular kind of process R&D activity, which I will call Transport and Communication R&D and which aims at increasing the net amount of the product that reaches consumers. I will limit my study to a Cournot duopoly setting. The strategic interaction will be therefre axpressed in terms of a two-stage three strategy game, where firms first decide whether to invest in one of the two types of R&D and then they compete in the market by setting quantities. As a result, I will obtain both symmetric and asymmetric equilibria, depending on the relative efficiency of the R&D effert.

AbstractIn this paper we compare two policy instruments that can be adopted to curb carbon emissions. The first is a conventional pollution tax, the second is an environmental campaign raising consumers' awareness about the relative impact of their consumption choices. The comparison is carried out in two different scenarios, depending on whether consumers' aprioristic preferences are such that they value the environmental attribute of a product (environmental quality) or its pure performance (hedonic quality) . In the case of environmental quality, the campaign is preferred under some specific conditions based on consumer heterogeneity, cost-effective analysis, and pollution level. On the contrary, the pollution tax is always preferred in the case of hedonic quality. Therefore, we show that the relative efficiency of the two policy instruments crucially depends on consumers' initial concern for the environment, which may vary across countries due to socio-economic conditions.

Innovation and marketing strategies adopted by multinational companies in the globalized economy are subject to continuous challenges. Consider EU exporting companies that produce, for example, solar panels. Depending on political elections and the ensuing support for environmental policies (or the lack thereof), their innovative strategy may reveal either extremely successful or futile. The aim of this paper is to explore the conditions under which innovative and proactive companies survive in a global scenario that changes based not only on economic but also on political as well as social factors.

Innovation and marketing strategies adopted by multinational companies in the globalized economy are subject to continuous challenges. Consider EU exporting companies that produce, for example, solar panels. Depending on political elections and the ensuing support for environmental policies (or the lack thereof), their innovative strategy may reveal either extremely successful or futile. The aim of this paper is to explore the conditions under which innovative and proactive companies survive in a global scenario that changes based not only on economic but also on political as well as social factors. This work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

We revisit Fujiwaraís (2008) differential duopoly game to show that the degenerate nonlinear feedback identified by the tangency point with the stationary state line is indeed unstable, given the dynamics of the natural resource exploited by firms. To do so, we fully characterise the continuum of nonlinear feedback solution via Rowat's (2007)method, characterising the infinitely many stable nonlinear feedback equilibria.

Online review aggregators, such as TripAdvisor, HotelClub and OpenTable help consumers identify the products and services that best match their preferences. The goal of this study is to understand the impact of online review aggregators on firms and consumers. We adopt Salop's circular city model in which consumers initially do not know the locations of the firms in the product space. The firms decide whether or not to be listed on an online review aggregator's website and choose their prices. When a firm resorts to the aggregator, its location and price become observable to the consumers who visit the website. We consider two different scenarios, depending on the possibility for online firms to offer discounts to the consumers who book online. We show that in equilibrium not all firms will go online – some will remain offline. Online firms attract more customers than their offline counterparts due to reduced mismatch costs, but face a tougher price competition. Comparing the equilibrium prices, profits and the number of firms that go online across the scenarios, we derive interesting conclusions from the private and the social standpoints.

The aim of this paper is to study both the private and the social desirability of a mixed bundling strategy that generates a cost savings effect. We confirm that mixed bundling is the dominant strategy for multiproduct firms, although it may give rise to a prisoner's dilemma. Moreover, we show that mixed bundling may maximise social welfare, provided that cost savings are sufficiently high. Finally, we highlight the parametric regions where the social and the private interests coincide, and those where they do not. The recent evolution of broadband telecommunications services provides an ideal framework to apply our theoretical predictions.

We extend Fujiwara's (2008) model to describe a differential oligopoly game of resource extraction under static, linear feedback and nonlinear feedback strategies, generalising his result that steady state feedback outputs are lower than monopoly and static oligopoly equilibrium outputs for any number of firms. Additionally, we show that (i) feedback rules entail resource exhaustion for a finite number of firms; and (ii) feedback strategies are more aggressive than static ones as long as the resource stock is large enough, in accordance with the acquired view based on the traditional pre-emption argument associated with feedback information.