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This dissertation consists of three essays evaluating topics in industrial organization. The first essay investigates a market structure or property regime in which a final good exists only by assembling multiple, monopoly-supplied components. In such dynamic settings, any sunk cost results in an outcome of hold-up, also known as tragedy of the anticommons. I design a model showing conditions for which two factors that reduce sunk cost, refunds and complementarities, mitigate hold-up. If the first component purchased has positive stand alone value or the first seller offers a full refund, hold-up is mitigated. My results suggest several policies that can mitigate inefficient outcomes in assembly problems, including legal requirements on full refunds, regulation on the purchasing order of components, and prohibition of price discrimination. The second essay applies Bayesian statistics to single-firm event studies used in securities litigation and antitrust investigations. Inference based on Bayesian analysis does not require an assumption of normality that potentially invalidates standard inference of classical single-firm event studies. I investigate ten events, five from actual securities litigation cases. Various Bayesian models, including replication of the frequentist approach, are examined. A flexible Bayesian model, replacing parametric likelihood functions with the empirical distribution function, also is explored. Our approach suggests an alternative, valid method for inference with easy implementation and interpretation. The third essay, motivated in the context of pharmaceutical advertising, analyzes demand rotations caused by an exogenously determined advertising parameter under Cournot oligopoly competition. We find that firms and consumers prefer extreme levels of advertising, but preferences for which extreme do not necessarily align. However, these differences can be alleviated with few or many firms in the market or cheap or expensive technologies. Therefore, advertising levels, regulated or not, might not serve consumers' best interests unless certain market attributes hold. |
