Controlling Sellers Who Provide Advice: Regulation and Competition*

A monopoly seller advising buyers about which of two goods fits their needs may be tempted to recommend the higher margin good. For the seller to collect information about a buyer’s needs and provide truthful advice, the profits from selling both goods must be similar enough, i.e., within an implementability cone. The optimal regulation controls pricing distortions and information-collection incentives separately via price regulation and fixed rewards respectively. This no longer holds when the seller has private information about costs as both problems interact. We study whether competition and the threat by buyers to switch sellers can substitute for regulation.     

Price discrimination by language: Field experimental evidence from a shopping mall

To investigate whether foreign shoppers are discriminated against, we conduct a field experiment at a large shopping mall. We employ 56 female foreigners speaking 11 different languages and 7 Korean natives and collect data on total 2267 store visits. To test price discrimination based on differential search costs, we randomly select buyers to send a signal of lower search cost. Results show that negotiation and signaling induce sellers to lower their price offers. Our experimental findings, combined with auxiliary survey data from foreign visitors, suggest that sellers use the language of buyers as a proxy for the distribution of reservation values.     

ENDOGENOUS COSTS AND PRICE‐COST MARGINS: AN APPLICATION TO THE EUROPEAN AIRLINE INDUSTRY*

This paper allows for endogenous costs in the estimation of price cost margins. In particular, we estimate price‐cost margins when firms bargain over wages. We extent the standard two‐equation set‐up (demand and first‐order condition in the product market) to include a third equation, which is derived from bargaining over wages. In this way, price‐cost margins are determined by wages and vice versa. We implement the model using data for eight European airlines from 1976–1994, and show that the treatment of endogenous costs has important implications for the measurement of price‐cost margins and the assessment of market power. Our main result is that observed prices in Europe are virtually identical to monopoly prices, even though observed margins are consistent with Nash behavior. Apparently, costs had been inflated to the point that the European consumers were faced with a de facto monopoly prices.     

What types of switching costs to create under behavior-based price discrimination?

We study firms' incentives to create switching costs using a four-period model consisting of two consecutive price-competing stages intervened by options to create switching costs early (before price competition) and late (during price competition). Acknowledging that many real/social switching costs need to be created early while many contractual/pecuniary switching costs are set up late during the competition, we show that firms are better off minimizing real/social switching costs while maximizing contractual/pecuniary switching costs. The results highlight the importance of timing of creation that is embedded in different types of switching costs. We also show that switching costs can actually benefit consumers when firms practice behavior-based price discrimination because consumers can enjoy benefits of deep price discounts without the hassle of actually switching. Therefore, an observed lack of consumer switching should not be immediately interpreted as lack of competition in markets where both switching costs and behavior-based pricing exist.     

On the use of low-price guarantees to discourage price cutting

This paper formulates a novel test to assess whether, and to what extent, firms might be using low-price guarantees to discourage their rivals from cutting prices. The test is based on a comparison of paired observations of advertised prices that are set by competing firms at the same point in time on similar items, where one price is set by a firm that has a low-price guarantee and the other by a firm that does not have a low-price guarantee. Using data on retail tire prices, we find that the majority of paired observations involving firms that have price-matching guarantees are consistent with what one would expect if firms were using them to discourage price cutting, whereas the majority of paired observations involving firms that have price-beating guarantees are not. This suggests that price-matching and price-beating guarantees may be serving different purposes. The evidence also suggests that guarantees that apply to advertised prices only may be serving different purposes than guarantees that apply to both advertised and selling prices.     

The Effect of Fuel Price Changes on Fleet Demand for New Vehicle Fuel Economy

New vehicle purchases by private companies and government agencies, or ‘fleet’ buyers, represent a significant percentage of overall new vehicle sales in the United States. Yet little is known about fleet demand for new vehicle fuel economy including how it responds to fuel price changes. Using unique disaggregated data on fleet and household registrations of new vehicles from 2009 to 2016, we estimate how fleet demand for new vehicle fuel economy responds to fuel price changes. We find that fleet purchases of low fuel economy vehicles fall relative to high fuel economy vehicles when gasoline prices increase, a finding that is consistent with fleet buyers’ taking into account capitalization of fuel costs in the second‐hand market. Our estimates imply that raising gasoline prices by one dollar would increase fuel economy of new vehicles acquired by fleet buyers by 0.33 miles per gallon. We estimate a similar response for household buyers during the same period. This result justifies basing fuel economy responses to fuel cost changes on household data alone, an assumption widely used in the vehicle demand literature and the fuel economy valuation literature. We also find, however, that the response to fuel price changes varies across the types of fleet buyers: rental companies respond strongly to fuel price changes, whereas commercial and government buyers are insensitive. Our estimates imply that an increase in the federal gasoline tax would modestly increase fuel economy of vehicles bought by households and rental companies but would have little to no impact on fuel economy of vehicles bought by non‐rental companies and governments.     

Reverse Price Discrimination with Bayesian Buyers

This paper studies price discrimination under the situation in which buyers' prior valuations are initially observable by a seller but buyers receive further information about a product or service which remains private thereafter. The buyers interpret new information via Bayes' rule. We show that, in this environment, prices are not monotone in buyers' prior valuations. Interestingly, this results in the possibility that a seller intentionally offers a higher price to a low valuation buyer rather than a high valuation buyer (Reverse Price Discrimination). We derive this result in both monopoly and duopoly markets.     

Unimodality of price-setting newsvendor's objective function with multiplicative demand and its applications

We present a general solution framework for the price-setting newsvendor problem with a multiplicative stochastic demand. Under mild assumptions, such as increasing price elasticity on the mean demand function and increasing generalized failure rate on the distribution of the random factor, we first prove that both the profit function with respect to price and its derived function with respect to order quantity are quasi-concave. Three applications are then studied under our solution framework: (1) We consider a wholesale price only contract by which a manufacturer sets a wholesale price and a newsvendor determines an order quantity and the retail price, and show that the manufacturer's profit function is unimodal with respect to retailing price or stocking factor under certain conditions. (2) We consider a newsvendor problem in which the demand depends on both the retail price and the level of sales effort, and the cost exerting the sales effort is proportional to the order quantity; we prove that there exists a unique pair of price and sales-effort levels that maximize the total profit. This result is established under a set of mild assumptions on the demand and cost functions. (3) We identify a property in the single-period profit function that satisfies Condition 1 of Huh and Janakiraman (2008), which in turn guarantees the optimality of (s, S) policy for an infinite stationary dynamic inventory-price control system with lost sales and fixed order costs. Finally, the unimodality of the newsvendor problem with a general stochastic and price-sensitive demand is studied.     

Exclusionary Pricing When Scale Matters

We consider an incumbent firm and a more efficient entrant, both offering a network good to several asymmetric buyers, and both being able to price discriminate. The good has positive value to buyers only if the network size exceeds a certain threshold. The incumbent's installed base guarantees this critical size to the incumbent, while the entrant needs to attract enough ‘new’ buyers to meet this threshold. We show that price discrimination (in the various forms it may take) reduces the set of achievable socially efficient entry equilibria, and discuss the policy implications of this result.     

Nonsequential search equilibrium with search cost heterogeneity

We generalize the model of Burdett and Judd (1983) to the case where an arbitrary finite number of firms sells a homogeneous good to buyers who have heterogeneous search costs. We show that a price dispersed symmetric Nash equilibrium always exists. Numerical results show that the behavior of prices and consumer surplus with respect to the number of firms hinges upon the nature of search cost dispersion: when search costs are relatively concentrated, entry of firms leads to lower average prices and greater consumer surplus; however, for relatively dispersed search costs, the mean price goes up and consumer surplus may decrease with the number of firms.     

An exploratory investigation of the elements of B2B brand image and its relationship to price premium

Much of the extant work on brand equity in business markets has focused on predicting brand loyalty, as in what brand image elements that make buyers prefer to buy a brand. The question what drives buyers to pay more or less for brands has however been somewhat overlooked, despite price premium being a distinct and economically important outcome of a favourable brand image. In an attempt to answer this question, this paper suggests that the corporate brand image determinants of price premium can be conceptualised into six dimensions: brand familiarity-, product solution-, service-, distribution-, relationship- and company associations. Findings from a small-scale qualitative investigation, based on interviews with buyers of corrugated packaging, are used to illustrate this model as well as to explore its microelements and demonstrate why they can be assumed to be mentally related to buyers' willingness to pay.     

INFORMATION REVELATION AND BUYER PROFITS IN REPEATED PROCUREMENT COMPETITION*

I investigate how procurement costs are affected by the information that buyers reveal about sellers' behavior, in a setting with two sequentially offered contracts for which a seller's privately known costs are identical. Expected prices are lowest when sellers learn nothing until all contracts are allocated, are higher when they learn all sellers' price offers as contracts are allocated, and typically are even higher when they learn only the winner's identity, or the winner's identity and price offer. The results suggest that buyers engaged in repeated procurement may pay less by revealing minimal or extensive information, rather than an intermediate amount.     

Platform Price Parity Clauses and Consumer Obfuscation*

Several antitrust authorities have investigated platform price parity clauses around the world. I analyze the impact of these clauses when platforms design a search environment for sellers and buyers to interact. In a model where platforms choose the unit search cost faced by consumers, I show when platforms can profitably obfuscate consumers through high search costs. Then, I show that price parity clauses, when exogenously given, can increase or reduce obfuscation, prices, and consumer surplus. Finally, when price parity clauses are endogenous, they are only observed in equilibrium if they hurt consumers.     

Public Procurement Auctions and Competition in Turkey

This paper empirically investigates the effect of the competitive environment (number of participants) on the cost of procurement. We use a unique dataset provided by the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) of Turkey that covers all of the government procurement auctions for the years 2004–2006. First, after controlling for possible endogeneity, we show that the number of bidders significantly and negatively affects the procurement price. Thus, the existence of a more competitive environment significantly decreases procurement costs in Turkey. Second, when auctions are open to foreign participation, the auction price tends to be lower. Finally, prices in services and goods sectors are more sensitive to changes in the number of bidders than is true for the construction sector. The results of this paper have several policy implications for e-procurement and efficient procurement design.     

Price-Matching Guarantees and Equilibrium Selection in a Homogenous Product Market: An Experimental Study

Price-matching guarantees have been alleged to sustain collusive prices in a homogenous product market. Theories in this literature also suggest that there exist multiple equilibria (i.e., a set of price equilibria between the competitive and the monopoly price) when all sellers adopt these guarantees in such a market. Theoretical prediction in this case fails to pin down the actual behavior of players a priori. This paper illustrates the essential role of controlled experiment in testing the collusive theory of price-matching guarantees and thereby shedding light on the embedded equilibrium selection problem. In particular, this paper studies two highly stylized market models, obtains testable predictions, and lays out the design of the controlled experiment. Results indicate that these guarantees facilitate collusion among sellers and thus solve the equilibrium selection problem considerably. I am grateful to Jim Cox, Martin Dufwenberg, Haimanti Bhattacharya, and the editor of this journal and the two referees for their suggestions. I thank seminar participants at the University of Arizona and North American Economic Science Association meeting at Tucson, 2003 for their helpful comments. A research grant from ESL, University of Arizona, for this project is gratefully acknowledged. I am solely responsible for any remaining errors and omissions.     

Collusion through Coordination of Announcements

A theory is developed to explain how sellers can effectively collude by coordinating on list prices (or surcharges), while leaving sellers to set their final prices. List prices are interpreted to be cheap talk announcements about cost information unknown to buyers. Buyers use those announcements to decide whom to invite to their procurement auction and the reserve price to set. By coordinating on a high list price to signal high cost, sellers produce supracompetitive prices by inducing buyers to be less aggressive, as reflected in a higher reserve price. We show that collusion can raise social welfare.     

Deed Types, House Prices and Mortgage Interest Rates

When houses are sold they come with a deed attached that spells out the legal guarantees on good title. Some deeds give clues about the characteristics of the seller or the house. Using a 37,043-observation house price hedonic with a Bayesian spatial error model, we find the type of deed attached to a housing sale can have a dramatic correlation with the sale price. Ten deed types command a discount, and one commands a premium relative to warranty deeds. Mortgage rates for sheriff's deeds and foreclosure deeds are lower than for warranty deeds, indicating more sophisticated buyers.     

Is Selection Bias Inherent in Housing Transactions? An Equilibrium Approach

We develop an equilibrium model for residential housing transactions in an economy with houses that differ in their quality and households that differ in their planned holding horizon. We show that, in equilibrium, a clientele effect persists, with long‐horizon buyers overwhelmingly choosing higher quality properties and short‐horizon buyers settling for lower quality properties. This clientele effect creates a sample selection bias: the properties that are on the market are predominantly of lower quality. Since these are the preferred choice of short‐horizon buyers, they demonstrate a faster turnover. Both the clientele effect and the selection bias are more pronounced with an increase in the variance of house quality and in the variance of the planned holding horizon. Our theoretical model supports empirical evidence on the existence of such bias in home price indices and explains it by the differences in ex ante holding horizons.     

A co-ordination model combining incentive scheme and co-ordination policy for a single-vendor-multi-buyer supply chain

Incentive scheme and co-ordination policy are substantial components for the co-ordination of a decentralized supply chain system, but there is little work combining the two components as a single decision model (Li and Wang, 2007). This paper proposes a model which incorporates both incentive and co-ordination issues into a single co-ordination model for a single-vendor multi-buyer supply chain. In the proposed model, the co-ordination is achieved by synchronizing ordering and production cycles while price discount, which is based on the buyers’ order intervals, is used as the incentive to motivate buyers to participate in the co-ordination. While the vendor is benefited from the co-ordination by synchronized cycles, the proposed price discount scheme can guarantee that a buyer’s total relevant cost of co-ordination will be reduced when compared with independent optimization. More importantly, the proposed price discount scheme does not require any cost information from the buyers.     

Impact Fees and the Price of New Housing: An Empirical Study

Development exactions in the form of impact fees are being used increasingly by local governments to fund the cost of providing public services necessitated by growth and development. This paper presents the results of an empirical study designed to ascertain the extent to which impact fees are capitalized into the price of new, single-family dwellings. On June 3, 1974, the city of Dunedin, located in Pinellas County, Florida, began assessing impact fees of $1,150 against all new, single-family construction. Using data on 5,839 new home sales in Dunedin and three other cities in Pinellas County from 1971–1982, it was found that builders were able to pass forward the total cost of impact fees to new home buyers. However, the price differential due to impact fees for new dwellings in Dunedin compared to the price of new dwellings in the other three cities disappeared after approximately six years. This is explained by the nature of the fee structure in Dunedin, adjustments in factor costs, increases in the price of housing in competing cities, and unrealized expectations regarding the benefits to be provided by impact fee collections.