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We develop a new approach to discrete choice demand for differentiated products, using copulas to separate the marginal distribution of consumer values for product varieties from their dependence relationship, and apply it to the issue of how preference dependence affects market outcomes in symmetric multiproduct industries. We show that greater dependence lowers prices and profits under certain conditions, suggesting that preference dependence is a distinct indicator of product differentiation. We also find new sufficient conditions for the symmetric multiproduct monopoly and the symmetric single-product oligopoly prices to be above or below the single-product monopoly price.

Our paper examines the importance of office suites for the evolution of the PC office software market in the 1990s. We develop a discrete choice model of product differentiation that enables us to estimate correlation in consumer preferences across spreadsheets and word processors. Estimation confirms strong positive correlation of consumer values for spreadsheets and word processor products, a bonus value for suites, and an advantage for Microsoft products. We use the estimated demand model to simulate various ‘hypothetical’ market structures in order to shed light on the welfare and competitive effects of bundling in the office productivity software market. We examine the competitive effects of bundling in a simulated market setting of partial competition, in which Lotus sells only a spreadsheet and WordPerfect sells only a word processor, while Microsoft sells both components as well as a suite. Assuming the rivals remain active in the market, when the correlation is positive, the introduction of the suite is pro-competitive (i.e., beneficial for consumers) on balance. This is mainly because the suite bonus 'value' is much larger than the difference between the suite price and the sum of Microsoft’s component prices when Microsoft does not offer a suite. When there is strong positive correlation (as we find), there are many such consumers who purchase both components separately when suites are not available. All of these consumers 'switch' to the suite when it is introduced, and reap significant benefits. The simulations show that the introduction of Microsoft’s Office suite also expands the distribution of spreadsheets and word processors, and this is beneficial to consumers as well.

Using copulas to model the stochastic dependence of values, this paper establishes new general conditions on the profitability of product bundling. A multiproduct monopolist generally achieves higher profit from mixed bundling than from separate selling if consumer values for two products are negatively dependent, independent, or have limited positive dependence. With more than two goods, the same conditions are sufficient for an optimal monopoly selling scheme to include a bundle of at least two products. The profitability of monopoly bundling also extends to situations where a multiproduct firm competes with a single-product rival.

This paper takes the new approach of using a copula to characterize consumer preferences in a discrete choice model of product differentiation, and applies it to the economics of monopoly and duopoly. The comparative statics of demand strength and preference diversity, both properties of the marginal distribution of values for each product variety, are strikingly similar across market structures. Preference dependence, a property of the copula and an indicator of product differentiation, is a key determinant of whether prices are higher in multiproduct industries compared to single-product monopoly. Furthermore, the effects of preference on prices and profits influence equilibrium product selection. Remarkably, a horizontally-differentiated duopoly sometimes can foreclose a higher-quality monopoly to the detriment of consumer and social welfare.

In a discrete choice model of product differentiation, the symmetric duopoly price may be lower than, equal to, or higher than the single-product monopoly price. While the market share effect of competition encourages a firm to charge less than the monopoly price because a duopolist serves fewer consumers, the price sensitivity effect of competition motivates a higher price when more consumer choice steepens the firm's demand curve. The joint distribution of consumer values for the two conceivable products determines the relative strength of these effects, and whether presence of a symmetric competitor results in a higher or lower price compared to single-product monopoly. The analysis reveals that rice-increasing competition is unexceptional from a theoretical perspective.

The paper surveys the economics literature on the competitive effects of vertical integration, assesses the relevance of the economics literature for several recent regulatory and antitrust cases, and defends a structured rule of reason approach to evaluating the competitive effects.

This thesis argues that prominent in the purposes of the dramaturgy of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey was the promotion of his political causes - most notably socialism. In his avidity for the cause of establishing a workers' paradise, following the Soviet model, in Ireland, his ire was drawn to the movements and institutions he perceived as distracting the masses from pursuit of this ideal: republicanism and the Church. These political ideals are prominent themes in his collected works - both fiction and non-fiction. The work is essentially divided into two sections. The first examines the development of O'Casey's ideologies - his socialism, anti-nationalism and anti-clericalism - and the backdrop against which they developed. The purpose is to establish just how passionately O'Casey felt about these ideals and how, in his letters, histories and autobiographies, he dedicated much of his effort to promoting them. Having dedicated so much time and energy to championing socialism and attacking the Church in these texts, it is little wonder they should appear so prominently in his plays. The thesis argues that O'Casey distorted the content of his Autobiographies to reinforce his role as self appointed champion of Dublin's "bottom fifth" and his beloved working class. It contends that O'Casey embellished the suffering of his childhood and the hardship endured by his family to fortify his credentials as a "socialist hero" - to be "for them" he sought to be "of them," and to provide a model for how learning and conversion to the socialist ideal would liberate them from the economic oppression that kept them low. A number of facts, even elementary ones like the number of children in the Casey brood and particular dates and addresses where he had lived, were changed to cultivate the working class hero image, the disadvantaged boy who rose up against all that an unjust and unsympathetic world could throw at him, that he so coveted. The more abject the origins, the greater the final triumph. The thesis then looks briefly at the origins and purposes of the Abbey Theatre, and its part in the Irish Renaissance that gave O'Casey his start. It focuses particularly on the role of Yeats, and his desire to build a dramatic movement which created work free from opinion. His famous determination to "reduce the world to wallpaper" brought him into conflict with O'Casey, who saw his plays as a legitimate vehicle for the expression of his own world view. It is important, in terms of the objective of this study, to establish that O'Casey's works were deliberately constructed pieces of didacticism, to demonstrate just how inimical to the original intent of the movement his purposes were. With this in mind, it is instructive to compare him with the other great Irish dramatist of the period, John Millington Synge, whose works, with their more rustic focus, promoted the kind of impressionistic 'slice of life' theatre the Abbey founders were championing. For O'Casey, the cause was paramount. He wrote morality plays. The study examines how O'Casey's dominant ideological position evolved by examining his own changing perspective about the world around him. It shows how O'Casey began to see all struggles in terms of the economic one between classes, and how he came to be converted to the tenets of socialism. His opposition to nationalism and his anti-clericalism essentially reflected his belief that they were hostile to the interests of the workers, and therefore must be engaged. The dominant sources in this section are O'Casey's letters, his Autobiographies, and his book, The Story of the Irish Citizen Army. The second sectio of the thesis focuses on the first seven extant plays: The Harvest Festival, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, The Silver Tassie, Within the Gates, and The Star Turns Red, and examines how each promotes O'Casey's causes. The purpose of the thesis is not to promote a reworking of the biographical detail of O'Casey's life, but to trace the shift in the playwright's ideology - from Protestant Orange to Republican Green and finally, and most steadfastly, Socialist Red - and examine how these beliefs found voice in the characters and construction of his earlier plays.

A vertically integrated firm has the incentive and ability to use exclusive contracts to foreclose an equally efficient upstream competitor and to effect a cartelization of the downstream industry. Its ability to do so may be limited when downstream firms are heterogeneous and supply contracts are not contingent on uncertain market conditions. The extent of cartelization depends on the degree of downstream market concentration and on the degree to which downstream competition is localized.

The paper considers an industry featuring agency problems between outside investors and entrepreneurs who manage the firms comprising the industry. In a range of circumstances, industry scale is independent of product market structure, and is determined solely by the amount of equity financing contributed by the entrepreneurs, and by the capital market's response to possible managerial malfeasance. Thus, in the face of capital market constraints, a change in product-market concentration has no effect on market performance unless it occasions a change in the amount of inside equity financing.