In an industry characterized by oligopolistic market structures there are generally firms that have enough market power as to influence the pricing and output decisions of all participants, forcing others to follow the strategies decided by the dominant firm(s) with very little opportunity to do otherwise (Besanko et al 2010, Tirole 1990). When a dominant firm is at the same time part of a larger corporation, and due to the financial support it is likely to have from its parent, it has the capacity to support an above-average, constant long-term investment strategy as a logical reaction to protect (or minimize) the loss of market share, and the rest of the participants in the industry are expected to also make an attempt to increase their investments, permanently affecting their long-term capital structure strategy (Chevalier 1995). This dissertation’s contribution to the literature in the field consists on presenting an empirical analysis of the capital structure decisions of the non-dominant firms in the Self-Service Discount Stores Industry (SSDSI) that result from the rapid expansion of Wal-Mart in the Mexican market, as well as an empirical analysis of the investment decisions in radiofrequencies of the incumbents firms in the capital structure of the other firms in the Mobile sector in Mexico.

Keywords (Industrial organization, Economics of Strategy, market structure, oligopolistic competition, capital structure, conditioned investment, market concentration, supermarket sector, spectrum auctions).