Stefan Bühler

This paper studies how competition and vertical structure jointly determine generating capacities, retail prices, and welfare in the electricity industry. Analyzing a model in which demand is uncertain and retailers must commit to retail prices before they buy electricity in the wholesale market, we show that welfare is highest if competition in generation and retailing is combined with vertical separation. Vertically integrated generators choose excessively high retail prices and capacities to avoid rent extraction in the wholesale market when their retail demand exceeds their capacity. Vertical separation eliminates the risk of rent extraction and yields lower retail prices.

This paper provides an explanation for escalating prices and fines based on a unified analytical framework that nests monopoly pricing and optimal law enforcement. We show that escalation emerges as an optimal outcome if the principal (i) lacks commitment ability, and (ii) gives less than full weight to agent benefits. Escalation is driven by decreasing transfers for non-active agents rather than increasing transfers for active agents. Some forward-looking agents then strategically delay their activity, which drives a wedge between the optimal static transfer and the benefit of an indifferent agent. This wedge is the source of escalation.

This paper shows that a firm can use the purchase price and the fine imposed on detected payment evaders to discriminate between unobservable consumer types. Assuming that consumers self-select into regular buyers and payment evaders, we show that the firm typically engages in second-degree price discrimination in which the purchase price exceeds the expected fine. In addition, we find that higher fines do not necessarily reduce payment evasion. We illustrate with data from fare dodging on public transportation.

This paper examines the conditions under which a state-owned firm with a political agenda strategically crowds out investment by a private firm. Employing reduced-form analysis, we show that strategic crowding out occurs if (i) the private firm regards investments as strategic substitutes, and (ii) private investment is undesirable from the state-owned firm's perspective. We discuss how our analysis applies to real-world markets and argue that it provides an explanation for the ambivalent evidence on the effect of public on private investment: State ownership is neither necessary nor sufficient for crowding out to occur.

We model retail-price recommendations (RPRs) as a communication device in vertical supply relations with private manufacturer information on production costs and consumer demand. With static trade, RPRs are irrelevant, and the equilibrium outcome is inefficient. With repeated trade, RPRs can become part of a relational contract, communicating private information from manufacturer to retailer that is indispensable for maximizing joint surplus. We show that this contract is self-enforcing if the retailer's profit is independent of production costs and punishment strategies are chosen appropriately. The predictions of our analysis are consistent with the available empirical evidence.

This paper provides a formal analysis of persuasive advertising when firms compete for consumers with heterogenous social attitudes towards the consumption by others. Deriving product demand from primitives, we show that the demand-enhancing effect of persuasive advertising varies across consumers and increases in the average degree of conformity. In equilibrium, both quality and cost leaders choose higher advertising intensities and charge higher prices than their competitors. In addition, we show that an increase in the average degree of conformity among consumers reinforces asymmetries between firms.

We examine the impact of price cap regulation on the capacity investments of oligopolistic suppliers facing time-varying demand. We find that binding price caps set above long-run marginal cost increase (rather than decrease) aggregate capacity investment.

This paper examines the interplay of endogenous vertical integration and cost-reducing downstream investment in successive oligopoly. Analyzing a linear Cournot model, we establish the following key results: (i) Vertical integration increases own investment and decreases competitor investment (intimidation effect). (ii) Asymmetric integration is a non-degenerate equilibrium outcome. (iii) Compared to a benchmark model without investment, complete vertical separation is a less likely outcome. We argue that these findings generalize beyond the linear Cournot model under reasonable assumptions.