In an industry where naturally monopolistic and competitive activities are vertically related, should the natural monopolist be allowed also to operate in the deregulated competitive sector? This paper assumes that monopoly pricing behavior is regulated and, therefore, the effect of vertical integration on the task of regulation is central to the analysis. When vertical integration by the monopolist is allowed, the regulator's task is made harder as the monopolist has anticompetitive incentives to raise rivals' costs. On the other hand, integration may lead to less duplication of fixed costs. The overall welfare comparison between separation and integration is ambiguous. Copyright 1995 by The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

Contingent charges for financial services, such as fees for unauthorized overdrafts, are often controversial. We study the economics of contingent charges in a stylized setting with naive and sophisticated consumers. We contrast situations where the naive benefit from the presence of sophisticated consumers with situations where competition works to subsidize the sophisticated at the expense of the naive, arguably unfairly. The case for regulatory intervention in these situations depends in good part, but not only, on the weight placed on distributional concerns. The economic and legal issues at stake are well illustrated by a case on bank charges recently decided by the U.K. Supreme Court. (JEL D14, D18, G21, G28, L51)

It is well known that comparative performance information can enhance efficiency in static principal-agent relationships by improving the trade-off between insurance and incentives in the design of explicit contracts. In dynamic settings, however, there may be implicit as well as explicit incentives, for example, managerial career concerns and the ratchet effects in regulation. The authors show that the dynamic effects of comparative performance information on implicit incentives can either reinforce or oppose the familiar (static) insurance effect and in either case can be more important for efficiency. The overall welfare effects of comparative performance information are thus ambiguous and can be characterized in terms of the underlying information structure. Copyright 1997 by the University of Chicago.

We examine competitive non-linear pricing in a model in which consumers have heterogeneous and elastic demands and can buy from more than one supplier. It is an equilibrium for firms to offer a menu of efficient two-part tariffs, where the discount for one-stop shopping is such that the elasticity of “demand for two-stop shopping” equals two. Compared with linear pricing, non-linear pricing tends to raise profit but harm consumers when: (i) demand is elastic, (ii) there is heterogeneity in consumer demand, (iii) consumers incur shopping costs when buying from more than one firm, and (iv) a consumer's brand preference for one product is correlated with her brand preference for another product. Non-linear pricing is more likely to lead to welfare gains when (iii) and (iv) hold, but (ii) does not.

We examine competitive nonlinear pricing in a model in which consumers have heterogeneous and elastic demands and can buy from more than one supplier.It is an equilibrium for firms to offer a menu of efficient two-part tariffs.Compared with linear pricing, nonlinear pricing tends to raise profit but harm consumers when: (i) demand is elastic, (ii) there is substantial heterogeneity in consumer demand, (iii) consumers face substantial shopping costs when buying from more than one firm, and (iv) a consumer's brand preference for one product is correlated with her brand preference for another product.Nonlinear pricing is more likely to lead to welfare gains when (iii) and (iv) hold, but (ii) does not.

The paper presents two models of races in which there is both technological uncertainty and strategic interaction between competitors as the race unfolds. Most of the existing literature examines one or other of these features, but not the two combined. Our aim is to see how the efforts of competitors in a race vary with the intensity of rivalry between them. In our principal model, whch is of a one-dimensional race, it is shown that the leader in the race makes greater efforts than the follower, and efforts increase as the gap between competitors decreases. Under certain conditions the same results hold in our second, related model, which is of a two-dimensional race.

This paper investigates perfect equilibrium in a model of a race in which two players are competing for an indivisible prize. The winner is the first player to reach the finishing line. It is shown that the behaviour of the winner of the race is often exactly as if he were the only player: the rival makes no difference. Even if competition does affect the winner's behaviour, it does so only in the first stage of the race and not thereafter. It is shown how several factors combine to determine which player will win: relative valuations of the prize, discount rates, efficiency at making progress and initial distances from the finishing line. Insofar as the model applies to patent races, it suggests that the potential competition faced by one firm in a patent race (e.g. an incumbent monopolist) may be of little or no consequence.

We explore patterns of price competition in an oligopoly where consumers vary in the set of firms they consider for their purchase and buy from the lowest‐priced firm they consider. We study a pattern of consideration, termed “symmetric interactions,” that generalizes models used in existing work (duopoly, symmetric firms, and firms with independent reach). Within this class, equilibrium profits are proportional to a firm's reach, firms with a larger reach set higher average prices, and a reduction in the number of firms (either by exit or by merger) harms consumers. However, increased competition (either by entry or by increased consumer awareness) does not always benefit consumers. We go on to study patterns of consideration with asymmetric interactions. In situations with disjoint reach and with nested reach, we find equilibria in which price competition is “duopolistic”: only two firms compete within each price range. We characterize the contrasting equilibrium patterns of price competition for all patterns of consideration in the three‐firm case.

We present a model in which a principal delegates the choice of project to an agent with different preferences. The principal determines the set of projects from which the agent may choose. The principal can verify the characteristics of the project chosen by the agent, but does not know which other projects were available to the agent. We consider situations where the collection of available projects is exogenous to the agent but uncertain, where the agent must invest effort to discover a project, where the principal can pay the agent to choose a desirable project, and where the principal can adopt more complex schemes than simple permission sets.

This paper is an attempt to identify some of the factors that affect the evolution of market structure in a model of dynamic competition between two firms. The stochastic evolution of the state of competition depends on the respective effort rates of the firms. The question is whether the current leader works harder than the laggard—does the ‘gap’ between firms tend to increase or decrease? We show that several effects are at work. The state tends to evolve in the direction where joint payoffs are greater. Since joint payoffs are related to joint product-market profits less joint effort costs, there are two classes of effect: the joint-profit effect and various joint-cost effects. The latter result in part from the pattern of profits, and in part from endpoint effects that give relief from efforts. Asymptotic expansions illuminate these influences. Moreover, we show by numerical simulation that there is another kind of joint-cost effect. The pattern of joint effort costs can influence the pattern of evolution of market structure, and the evolution of the pattern of market structure can influence the pattern of efforts, in a mutually self-reinforcing manner. In particular, there may be equilibria in which this last effect means that the laggard works harder than the leader even though all the other effects work in favour of the leader.