This paper investigates the effects of resale price maintenance (RPM) agreements in Europe by studying a legally-permitted form of RPM in the book market. In particular, we study the effects of such agreements on prices and sales, finding that countries which have Fixed Book Prices witness higher book sales with no noticeable effect on the average price of books. Whilst these results are limited to the book sector, they highlight that RPM agreements have the ability to confer positive competition effects and absolute prohibition of such agreements may not always be warranted.

A large and increasing proportion of teaching in UK universities is being fulfilled by staff on casual, rather than permanent, contracts. This paper examines how the proportion of teaching by casual staff affected student satisfaction in 2014–15. We find that an increased proportion of casual teaching leads to lower student satisfaction, even when controlling for respondent’s subject, university and faculty. This suggests a trade-off between increasing casualisation and student satisfaction, which could have implications for future student demand. These results can be generalised to the rest of the economy and highlight potential perverse effects arising from casual contracts.

This paper investigates the “adaptive investment effect”, a redirection of investment towards adaptive capital in order to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. We find that the impact of investment on economic growth is reduced by between 27% and 37% in Chinese provinces investing more in adaptive capital. This implies that the benefits from mitigation policies are greater than existing studies suggest.

Gluten-free (GF) food products are substantially more expensive than their conventional counterparts, raising concerns about inequality for individuals with coeliac disease and gluten intolerance. This paper decomposes that premium into its underlying economic causes. Focusing on the GB bread market - where GF products are 4 times as expensive, per kilogram, as conventional bread - I estimate a structural discrete-choice demand model. I use weekly household-level scanner data on bread purchases between 2017 and 2019, covering over 27,000 households and 3.3 million shopping occasions. Marginal costs are recovered under the assumption of multiproduct Bertrand–Nash competition. Preliminary results indicate that own-price elasticity of demand is similar between gluten-free and regular bread. Calculating mark-ups and recovering marginal costs reveals that the gluten-free price premium is almost entirely explained by higher marginal costs. High gluten-free prices therefore appear to reflect the cost of supply rather than price discrimination, with direct implications for the design of policy interventions aimed at improving affordability.

Price Match Guarantees (PMGs) are commitments by retailers to match or beat competitors’ prices, commonly employed across various industries. Whilst these guarantees supposedly benefit consumers by ensuring lower prices, economic theory presents mixed predictions regarding their actual impact. This study empirically examines the effects of removing a PMG policy at a leading UK retailer. The findings reveal that prices increased following the policy’s removal, offering support for the pro-competitive effects of PMGs. Notably, the price increases occurred not at the retailer that eliminated the guarantee but amongst its competitors, highlighting the broader market implications of such policies. I provide evidence consistent with a signalling mechanism underlying these findings. These results provide novel insights into the competitive dynamics of price match guarantees.

This paper investigates the effects of a form of resale price maintenance (RPM) in Belgium. In particular, we study the rollout of a fixed book price regulation across Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels to study the impact on prices, sales, and innovation in the book market.

This paper investigates the effects of the introduction of a quality rating system on consumer demand and switching behaviour in the English primary healthcare sector. We investigate the staggered publishing of these ratings by the sector regulator to examine how the availability of information affects patient switching.