The effects of market organization on conspiracies in restraint of trade

Mindful of the market structure-conduct-performance paradigm fundamental to industrial organization research, this paper uses laboratory experimental techniques to study the impact of conspiratorial opportunities on market performance. We compare ‘posted-offer’ markets where sellers (but not buyers) are all conspiratorial opportunities with observations from three control groups: (1) posted-offer markets without conspiratorial opportunities, (2) ‘double-auction’ markets with conspiratorial opportunities and (3) posted-offer markets with true single-seller monopolists. The basic conclusions generated by our experimental design are: (1) seller conspiracies in posted-offer markets tend to raise prices (but not profits) relative to similarly organized markets without conspiracies, (2) posted-offer conspiracies tend to generate higher prices (but not profits) than double-auction conspiracies, and (3) posted-offer monopolies tend to generate higher profits (but not prices) then posted-offer conspiracies.     

The effects of information costs on search and convergence in experimental markets

Nearly all markets contain some kind of friction, making it difficult to reach full efficiency. One ubiquitous source of market friction is the cost of obtaining pricing information. We determine how market performance as well as buyer and seller behavior are affected by the introduction of price information costs in experimental posted markets.Rothschild [Journal of Political Economy (1973) 1283; Journal of Political Economy (1974) 689] theorizes that search is negatively related to knowledge of the price dispersion and the cost of search, and positively related to market price dispersion. We find that market knowledge and the cost of search itself affect search, but we find no evidence supporting the role of price dispersion in search decisions.We also find evidence supporting Smith and Plott [Review of Economic Studies (1979) 133] and Walker and Williams (1988), both of which show price convergence comes from below in posted-bid markets and from above in posted-offer markets. High information costs tend to reduce or eliminate convergence. Average prices are above the market-clearing price for posted-offer markets, and below for posted-bid markets, and never cross the market-clearing threshold, also consistent with Walker and Williams.More generally, our results support the notion of symmetry between experimental posted-offer and posted-bid markets, broadening the relevance of experimental search research.     

Conspiracies and Secret Discounts in Laboratory Markets

This paper uses laboratory methods to evaluate whether price-fixing conspiracies break down in the presence of opportunities to offer secret discounts. The primary treatment difference is whether or not buyer-specific discounts from the posted list price are permitted. In standard posted-offer markets, conspiring sellers almost uniformly find and maintain near-monopoly prices. But when the possibility of offering secret discounts is introd uced, sellers find sustaining collusive agreements much more difficult, and transactions prices tend to fall toward competitive levels. Secret discounts yield competitive outcomes less consistently, however, when sellers are provided ex post information about sales quantities     

Pure numbers effects, market power, and tacit collusion in posted offer markets

This paper studies the effects of seller concentration and static market power on tacit collusion in extensively repeated laboratory posted-offer markets. Contrary to the implications of some earlier research, we find that tacit collusion does not become pervasive with extensive repetition. In a ‘strong no-power’ design persistently competitive outcomes are observed in markets with three or four sellers. Even duopolies are frequently competitive in this design. Unilateral market power raises prices, as predicted. However, static Nash predictions fail to organize outcomes across power treatments, because tacit collusion moves inversely with concentration. Excess capacity appears to explain observed tacit collusion levels.     

What Collusion? Unilateral Market Power as a Catalyst for Countercyclical Markups

This paper presents and tests a simple model of competitive and unilateral market power regimes that yields countercyclical markups. Following a decrease in demand in the short run, capacity-constrained firms may have a strong incentive not to lower their prices to the new competitive price. Demand shocks may introduce market power into a previously competitive market. Experimental posted offer markets support this conjecture with complete information on the market structure. With only private information, there appears to be a hysteresis effect concerning supracompetitive prices, i.e., markets with a history of supracompetitive pricing continue to generate supracompetitive prices following demand shocks. However, competitive markets also remain competitive following demand shocks when firms only have private information on costs and capacities.     

Confusopoly: competition and obfuscation in markets

This paper examines the effects of competition in experimental posted-offer markets where sellers can confuse buyers. I report two studies. In one, the sellers offering heterogeneous goods can obfuscate buyers by means of spurious product differentiation. In the other study, sellers offer identical goods and make their prices unnecessarily complex by having multi-part tariffs. I vary the level of competition by having treatments with two and three- sellers in both studies, and having an additional treatment with five-sellers in one study. The results show that average complexity created by a seller is not different for the treatments with two, three and five sellers. In addition, market prices are highest and buyer surplus is lowest when there are two sellers in a market.     

Price ceilings and firm-specific quantity restrictions in posted-offer markets

The effect of price ceilings and quantity controls in experimental posted-offer markets on market efficiency and total output is compared. Quantity controls adversely affect market performance relative to price ceilings. In the quota experiments contract and total surplus realization is lower than under equivalent price controls. Welfare outcomes, in terms of market efficiency, for price ceilings and quantity controls in a market setting are not the same, at least in the short run. Different welfare outcomes from equivalent controls are attributed to the manner in which the price and quantity search space is ‘censored’ by the price and quantity controls.     

The internationalisation of research and development by multinational enterprises and the transfer sciences

Overseas R&D in multinational enterprises responds to demand side and supply side factors. On the demand side laboratories can help to adapt or develop products for particular markets. However, since these markets may now be much wider than one country, where a laboratory doing such product development is located may also be influenced by where the best scientific inputs are available (i.e. supply-side factors). Also overseas R&D labs may do basic or applied research not related to current market needs or production conditions. The location of this is even more likely to be influenced by countries' scientific capabilities and capacities. The paper investigates the configuration of these influences on overseas R&D, and especially the role and implications of the supply-side factors.I would like to thank Marina Papanastassiou for permission to use material from her database and for valuable discussion of many of the issues dealt with in this paper.     

Can Markets Learn to Avoid Bubbles?

One of the most striking results in experimental economics is the ease with which market bubbles form in a laboratory setting and the difficulty of preventing them. This article re-examines bubble experiments in light of the results of an earlier series of market experiments that show how learning occurs in markets characterized by an asymmetry of information between buyers and sellers, such as found in Akerlof's lemons model and Spence's signaling model. Markets with asymmetric information are incomplete because they lack markets for specific levels of product quality. Such markets either lump all qualities together (lemons) or using external indications of quality to separate them (signaling). Similarly, the markets used in bubble experiments are incomplete in that they are lacking a complete set of forward or futures markets, depriving traders of the information supplied by the prices in those markets. Preliminary experimental results suggest that the addition of a single forward market can sometimes mitigate bubble formation and this article suggests more extensive research in this direction is warranted. Market bubbles outside of the laboratory usually are found in markets in which forward and futures markets are either legally restricted or otherwise limited. Experimentation in markets with asymmetric information also indicates that the ability of subjects to learn how to send and receive signals can be enhanced by changing the way that market information is presented to them. We explore how this result might be used to help asset markets learn to avoid bubbles     

中国股票市场对货币政策影响的实证分析

本文运用现代计量经济分析方法,从股票市场对货币需求的影响、股市的财富效应和投资效应,以及股票市场发展对货币政策信贷渠道的影响等几个侧面,实证分析了股票市场的发展对货币政策的影响。其结论是,中国股市的发展已经对狭义货币M1的需求产生了较大影响,而且整体上加剧了狭义货币M1需求的不稳定性;中国股市的发展并未给广义货币M2的需求造成系统性的影响;中国股市的财富效应和投资效应目前都还比较微弱,特别是投资效应;中国股市的发展已经一定程度地分流了信贷渠道对货币政策传导的作用,但迄今为止,信贷渠道仍然是中国货币政策传导的主渠道。     

Don’t let your robots grow up to be traders: Artificial intelligence, human intelligence, and asset-market bubbles

Researchers who have examined markets populated by “robot traders” have claimed that the high level of allocative efficiency observed in experimental markets is driven largely by the “intelligence” implicit in the rules of the market. Furthermore, they view the ability of agents (artificial or human) to process information and make rational decisions as unnecessary for the efficient operation of markets. This paper presents a new series of market experiments that show that markets populated with standard robot traders are no longer efficient if time is a meaningful element, as it is in all asset markets. While simple two-season markets with human subjects reliably converge to an efficient equilibrium, markets with minimally intelligent robot traders fail to attain this equilibrium. Instead, these markets overshoot the equilibrium and then crash below it. In addition to firmly establishing the role of trader intelligence in asset-market equilibrium, these experiments also provide insights into why bubbles and crashes are consistently observed in many asset-market laboratory experiments using human subjects.     

The Design of ``Smart' Water Market Institutions Using Laboratory Experiments

One of the problems with proposals for substantialinstitutional change in water systems is thatmodification and irreversibility make the processslow, cautious and costly to society. In this paper,we discuss the role that experimental economics canplay in evaluating proposed institutional changes tohelp facilitate a more rapid and smooth adoption ofchanges in the water system. Experimental economicsyields a formal and replicable system for analyzingalternative market structures before they are actuallyimplemented. For example, a water market can bedeveloped and tested in the laboratory under supplyand demand constraints that reflect drought conditionsthat might occur in California, or other arid regionsin the world. We present a prototype of a Californiawater transfer model and the results from a series ofwater market experiments. Results include realizedmarket efficiency and surplus distribution, as well asan analysis of market price volatility. Theimplications of this research extend well beyondCalifornia water markets, not only to water markets inother arid regions, but also to the design of marketsfor other environmental goods, including tradablepollution permits and fishery ITQs.     

Volatility persistence and asymmetry under the microscope: the role of information demand for gold and oil

This study explores the relationship between Google search activity and the conditional volatility of oil and gold spot market returns. By aggregating the volume of queries related to the two commodity markets in the spirit of Da et al. ( 2015 ), we construct a weekly Searching Volume Index (SVI) for each market as proxy of households and investors information demand. We employ a rolling EGARCH framework to reveal how the significance of information demand has evolved through time. We find that higher information demand increases conditional volatility in gold and oil spot market returns. Information flows from Google SVI's reduce the proportion of the significant volatility asymmetry produced by negative shocks in both commodity markets. The latter is more profound in the gold market.     

Information and behavior in experimental markets

This paper reports the results of a block of experiments designed to analyze the effects of information on market performance in experimental competitive markets. Variations in institutional structure are utilized to affect the kind and amount of information subjects could gather about prices and supply and demand conditions. More information is associated with more rapid convergence, smaller variances, and closer convergence while efficiency and mean transactions prices are unaffected.     

BUBBLES,CRASHES, AND ENDOGENOUS UNCERTAINTY IN LINKED ASSET AND PRODUCT MARKETS*

In laboratory asset markets, subjects trade shares of a firm whose profits in a linked product market determine dividends. Treatments vary whether dividend information is revealed once per period or in real time and whether the firm is controlled by a profit‐maximizing robot or human subject. The latter variation induces uncertainty about firm behavior, bridging the gap between laboratory and field markets. Our data replicate well‐known features of laboratory asset markets (e.g., bubbles), suggesting these are robust to a market‐based dividend process. Compared to a sample of previous experiments, both real‐time information revelation and endogenous uncertainty impede the bubble‐mitigating impact of experience.     

Does quality influence choice of general practitioner? An analysis of matched doctor–patient panel data

The impact of quality on the demand facing health care providers has important implications for the industrial organization of health care markets. In this paper we study the consumers' choice of general practitioner (GP), assuming they are unable to observe the true quality of GP services. A panel data set for 484 Norwegian GPs, with summary information on their patient stocks, renders the opportunity to identify and measure the impact of GP quality on the demand, accounting for patient health heterogeneity. We apply a multi-equation model in the LISREL format, with GP quality and patient health as latent determinants of demand for GP services. Patient excess mortality rate at the GP level is one indicator of quality. Our results indicate that GP quality has a clear positive effect on demand, even when patient heterogeneity is accounted for.     

Market News in Commodity Price Theory: Application to the Ethiopian Grain Market

This paper examines the effect of "news" or advance information about future production on competitive storage behaviour and prices using a structural model of commodity markets. In particular, it generalizes the neoclassical storage model to incorporate information on future harvests, while allowing for seasonal production, two features important to African and other developing country grain markets. The model is first developed to suit the case of the Ethiopian grain markets, and a general model is then stated. The effects on welfare and price variability of the addition of news are discussed, as well as changes in key demand and uncertainty parameters. The model is shown to replicate some features of the data better than the model without news, particularly the high autocorrelation in price, and performs better in formal estimation. However, it appears that the incorporation of news still fails to explain the extreme seasonal price movements observed.     

Microeconomic modeling of parallel markets: The case of agricultural goods in the USSR

In a centrally planned economy, non-market-clearing prices fixed by the state cannot be used directly to estimate consumer behavior models. This paper represents an attempt to overcome this problem by utilizing prices in a parallel “free” market. An equilibrium model incorporating parallel markets is discussed and a demand curve arising from this model is estimated using data for the markets for meat and milk in the USSR. the price and income elasticities of demand for these goods are found to be significantly higher than those estimated for the United States.     

Strategic Manipulation and Information Market Microstructure

This paper presents a model of strategic manipulation in the context of an informational duopoly. The fact that market manipulation by these duopolists may affect their cost and demand structures implies that they can strategically manipulate the market in order to influence the information market equilibrium. This paper derives an equilibrium manipulation and establishes important comparative-static properties that may characterise such markets. The informational duopoly is beset with two types of inefficiency: first, market imperfections drive a wedge between the marginal cost and the market price leading to the usual deadweight loss. Secondly, an act of manipulation raises the marginal cost of production and, thereby, causes further welfare loss in such markets. We provide a complete characterisation of an optimal mechanism that can stem the welfare loss in informational markets.     

Aggregation and the analysis of markets

The case for aggregating relations in Economics is often tenuous. This paper shows that under conditions of genuine ignorance and real historical time, it is not possible to aggregate from individual demand and supply functions to market-level demand and supply functions. Hence the traditional analysis of markets based on market demand and market supply is called into question. Two proposals for replacing the traditional market analysis are suggested that do not rely on aggregation within markets.