Hedonic prices and cost/benefit analysis

Hedonic prices have been used to evaluate the willingness to pay for attributes. We reformulate the notion of hedonic price from a composite price on housing to a unit price on traded quantities, in conformity with long run competitive equilibrium theory. This formulation was suggested (but not developed) by Rosen (J. Polit. Econ.82, No. 1 (1974), 34–35). By first characterizing an efficient allocation of consumers to space, we show that hedonic unit prices can be understood as a bid-rent function which supports the efficient allocation. This is despite the fact that the lots over which consumers bid are themselves endogenous. We show that unit hedonic prices reveal preferences in a manner different from composite hedonic expenditures.     

A general-equilibrium model of a traditional Soviet-type economy

This paper presents an abstract, static model of a traditional Soviet-type economy, in which there are three kinds of agents (planners, firms, and consumers). A quantity-oriented incentive system for managers is described, as is a planners' allocation mechanism. There are technology-determined prices for producer goods and market prices for labor and consumer goods, which are sold by retail stores from which the planners collect a turnover tax. There are also profit and income taxes. A consumer-market equilibrium is shown to exist for each plan, and the results of simulations using fixed-point computation techniques are discussed. J. Comp. Econ., June 1977, 1(2), pp. 147–165. International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C.     

Product variety and price strategy in the ski manufacturing industry

The present paper aims at examining the role of variety in the ski manufacturing industry and its relevance in firms’ price setting strategies. In particular, it intends to investigate and to empirically test three hypotheses concerning the relations between: product quality and prices; variety in technical characteristics and prices; variety in service characteristics and prices. Our empirical investigation finds that prices are positively affected by product quality and positively affected by variety in service characteristics. This means that a high degree of product variety allows firms to charge a premium price on consumers, who are able to find the product that best meets their needs and are therefore willing to pay a higher price. By contrast, variety in technical characteristics negatively impacts prices. In a context where a dominant design has emerged and new varieties are not radically different from each other, the gains in economies of scale and scope outweigh the costs of the increased flexibility in the equipment required to produce variety.

The Influence of a Neighbouring Market on Product Qualities and Prices

This paper analyses a model of vertical product differentiation in which there is a primary market with two firms and a secondary market with no firms. Consumers in the secondary market incur a cost when purchasing the product from the primary market. The firms sequentially choose product quality and then simultaneously choose prices. Firm 1 always chooses the maximum quality, while firm 2's quality and the prices depend on the cost. Also, the cost determines which firm(s), if either, serves the secondary market. It is shown that the firms and the consumers of each market prefer different levels of costs.     

Optimum commodity taxation in pooling equilibria

This paper extends the standard model of optimum commodity taxation (Ramsey, F., 1927. A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation. Economic Journal 37, 47–61; Diamond, P., Mirrlees, J., 1971. Optimal Taxation and Public Production, II: "Tax Rules". American Economic Review 61, 261–278) to a competitive economy in which markets are inefficient due to asymmetric information. Insurance markets are prime examples: consumers impose varying costs on suppliers but firms cannot associate costs with individual customers and consequently all are charged equal prices. In such a competitive pooling equilibrium, the price of each good is equal to the average of individual marginal costs weighted by equilibrium quantities. We derive modified Ramsey–Boiteux Conditions for optimum taxes in such an economy and show that, in addition to the standard formula, they include first-order effects which reflect the deviations of prices from marginal costs and the response of equilibrium quantities to the taxes levied. An explanation of the additional terms is provided. It is shown that a condition on the monotonicity of demand elasticities enables to sign the direction of the deviations from the standard case.     

SERVICE QUALITY IN REGULATED NETWORK INDUSTRIES

ABSTRACT ** : Economic regulators provide incentives for good quality of service as well as constraints on the prices or revenue which can be charged by firms with monopoly power. Economic theory suggests that regulators should choose standards according to consumers' valuation and the marginal cost of quality improvements, and that firms respond by equalizing the marginal costs from not making improvements (i.e. the regulatory penalty plus any loss in revenue) with the marginal costs of improvement. This paper explores the evidence for such economically rational behaviour by both regulators and regulatees. We use a specially constructed data set on service quality targets and achievements across the main UK utility sectors; documentary evidence from regulators; and interviews with managers in companies subject to those regulators. We conclude that regulators are motivated by political as well as economic factors. And that companies may not respond primarily to the regulator's financial rewards or penalties for their quality targets, with a consequent danger that regulated consumers pay for marketing in unregulated markets; the resulting level of service quality may be ‘too high’ in the economic sense.     

Costly Search, Capacity Constraints, and Bertrand Equilibrium Price Dispersion

This article analyzes the impact of transaction (search) costs and capacity constraints in an almost competitive market with homogeneous firms that compete on price. We characterize conditions under which Nash equilibria with price dispersion exist; in equilibrium, firms play pure strategies in prices and consumers adopt a symmetric mixed search strategy. Price dispersion is possible even though consumers all have the same search cost and valuation for the item and prices charged by all firms are common knowledge.     

Can a decline in search cost increase prices?

This paper provides a new explanation of why a decline in consumers’ price search cost may not lead to lower prices. In a duopoly with price competition, I show that when some consumers are captive to one firm, there may be a non‐monotonic relationship between search cost and market power; firms may charge high prices with higher probability and the average price charged may be higher when consumers’ price search cost falls below a critical level. Furthermore, when firms have asymmetric captive segments, expected prices charged by each firm may move in opposite directions as search cost declines.     

The Value Relevance of Earnings and Nonearnings Information in Regulated and Deregulated Markets: The Case of the Airline Industry

This paper examines the valuation effects of earnings and two nonearnings-based measurements (book values and operating cash flow) on security prices of airline companies under two different market structures: regulated and deregulated. The literature lacks empirical evidence in examining the relative importance of earnings and nonearnings accounting-based measurements in regulated and deregulated markets, especially in the airlines industry. We compare coefficient estimates of regressing stock prices on earnings, book value, and cash flow from operations of airline companies during regulated and deregulated times. A control sample of manufacturing companies is also used for supporting inferences from the airline sample’s findings. In a typical regulated market, using cost recovery plus an adequate rate of return on assets, security prices are highly aligned with nonearnings measurements such as the book value. In the airline industry, regulation took the form of guaranteed routes and subsidies to service rural areas, giving rise to a differential effect of both earnings and nonearnings measurements. Under deregulation, airline firms operate in highly competitive markets with large airline firms enjoying the benefits of economy of scale and service diversification. Thus, the asset capitalization (book value), cash flow, and operational efficiencies (earnings) would be major indicators in the market assessment of the firm’s future profitability and security price. This paper finds that nonearnings measures have higher explanatory power of security prices in regulated times for the airline firms. In deregulated times, although earnings have a stronger relationship with prices, nonearnings measures continued to influence stock price levels, reflecting airline specific economics.

Consumer search markets with costly revisits

This paper characterizes equilibrium outcomes in consumer search markets taking the cost of going back to stores already searched explicitly into account. We show that the optimal sequential search rule under costly revisits is very different from the traditional reservation price rule in that it is non-stationary and not independent of previously sampled prices. We explore the implications of costly revisits on market equilibrium in two celebrated search models. In the Wolinsky model, some consumers search beyond the first firm. In this class of models, costly revisits do make a substantive difference and their impact can be of the same order of magnitude as the initial search cost. In the Stahl oligopoly search model where consumers do not search beyond the first firm, there remains a unique symmetric equilibrium that has firms use pricing strategies that are identical to the perfect recall case.     

Minimum safety standard,consumers’ information and competition

This paper explores the effects of a standard influencing care choice with an endogenous market structure. Under duopoly, firms compete either in prices or in quantities. Firm(s) may increase the probability of offering safe products by incurring a cost. A standard may correct a safety underinvestment by firms. It is shown that the market structure (duopoly or monopoly) linked to the standard depends on the available information. Under perfect information about safety for consumers, the selected standard is always compatible with competition. The absence of standard due to safety overinvestment by firms only emerges under competition in quantities and a relatively low cost of safety improvement. Under imperfect information about safety for consumers, the selected standard often leads to a monopoly situation, essential for covering the cost of safety improvement. However, for relatively high values of this cost, a standard cannot impede the market failure arising from the lack of information.      

THE POSTAL SERVICE IN THE EUROPEAN UNION PUBLIC MONOPOLY OR COMPETITIVE MARKET?: A transaction cost approach

The paper discusses the relevant institutional and economic aspects of the postal service, and analyses both the arguments for abolishing the statutory monopoly and those for retaining it. The main thesis of the paper is that public and private postal services differ from each other in many aspects: transaction costs, the willingness of the customer to pay, market structure, and possibilities of substituting the service with other communication instruments. Therefore, a simple privatisation will not solve per se the efficiency problems of the service. furthermore, the European Commission, which published in 1992 a green paper on postal services, is considering the possibility of harmonising the quality of the service within the EU and gradually reducing the gap in national postal prices. This seems to be an effective device to force firms towards the greater efficiency required in a Continental market. In future, the competition will take place not so much between private firms (more interested in running the high-value segments), as between national public carriers, as shown by the phenomenon of remail.     

Optimality and Natural Selection in Markets

We ask if natural selection in markets favors profit-maximizing firms and, if so, is there a difference between the predictions of models which assume all firms are profit maximizers and the predictions of models which explicitly take account of population dynamics in the market. We show that market selection favors profit maximizing firms, but we also show that the long-run behavior of evolutionary market models is nonetheless not consistent with equilibrium models based on the profit-maximization hypothesis. Dynamic equilibrium paths with market selection are not Pareto optimal, nor even asymptotically optimal. The discrepancy arises because the dynamics created by firm evolution causes prices to vary over time and the resulting dynamical system need not have stable steady states.     

Minimum quality standard regulation under imperfect quality observability

Minimum quality standards (MQS) constitute an important regulatory tool that can be used to raise product qualities, to benefit consumers and to increase market participation. One of the main assumptions in the existing literature is that firms must comply with standards. Nevertheless, in many industries, and in particular the service industry, quality observability and enforceability are not perfect. Some low quality firms do not comply with standards. What are the welfare implications of an MQS regulation in such an environment? We develop a price competition model of vertical differentiation that accounts for these empirical observations. Contrary to well-established results in the literature, MQS can increase quality disparity between firms and raise hedonic prices. Some consumers get hurt and market participation decreases.     

Markups,quality, and transport costs

This paper provides new evidence on trade prices based on firm-level data from France. It shows that firms charge higher free-on-board (net of transportation costs, hereafter noted as fob) unit values on exports to more distant countries. This finding holds within firms and products, and across destinations. The price premium paid by distant consumers is due to firms charging higher fob prices, and to higher transportation costs. A simple decomposition of the elasticity of import prices to distance shows that, after a fall in transport costs, almost 80% of the decline in import prices enjoyed by consumers is due to firms charging lower fob prices. This suggests a new channel through which changes in transport costs may affect welfare.     

Biofuels and Climate Change Mitigation: A CGE Analysis Incorporating Land-Use Change

We examine the impact of a “green network effect” in a market characterized by consumers’ environmental awareness and competition between firms in terms of both environmental quality and product prices. The unique aspect of this model comes from the assumption that an increase in the number of consumers of green (brown) product increases the satisfaction of each green (brown) consumer. We show that, paradoxically, when the network effect of a green product is higher than that of a brown product, this externality reduces product environmental quality and raises consumption of the green product. Conversely, when the network effect of the brown product is higher, the externality improves product environmental quality and raises consumption of the brown product. In both cases, the network effect does not affect the overall pollution level. The externality correction requires the use of three optimal fiscal policies: an ad valorem tax on products, an emission tax, and a subsidy or a tax on the green purchase. A second-best optimum can also be reached through the green taxation.     

The competitive advantage of honesty

We study competitive markets where firms may lie to their workers to reduce costs. Consumers may benefit from firms’ dishonesty through lower market prices. Does firms’ (dis-)honesty affect consumers’ purchasing decisions? Our experiment shows that when honesty is fully transparent, it can provide a competitive advantage: Honest firms sell more and – despite higher costs – achieve higher profits. This finding is in line with our equilibrium predictions when allowing for dishonesty-averse consumers. By identifying circumstances in which consumers – although not the addressee of dishonesty – “punish” firms for their within-firm dishonesty, we contribute both to behavioral ethics and behavioral industrial organization.     

Geographical separation of oligopolists can be very competitive

A given number of single, differentiated product oligopolists locate in one of two separate market-places, which consumers access at a cost. Firms set prices and the CES consumers choose purchases at one or both market-places. Firm agglomeration in one market-place produces positive profits because of product differentiation. But if consumer access costs are homogeneous and products are sufficiently good substitutes, geographical separation of firms produces prices analogous to homogeneous product Bertrand, and is “very competitive”, the reverse of textbook Hotelling. Hence a novel explanation emerges for the geographical agglomeration of firms producing very similar products.     

The capital structure and investment of regulated firms under alternative regulatory regimes

This paper explains how regulated firms choose their capital structure and examines the effects of this choice on investment and on regulated prices. It is shown that in equilibrium, firms have an optimal debt level and that given this debt level, the regulated price is set high enough to ensure that firms never become financially distressed. The analysis of the equilibrium yields testable hypotheses concerning the effects of changes in cost parameters and in the regulatory climate on the equilibrium investment level, capital structure, and regulated price. The analysis also shows that a regulatory restriction on the ability of the firm to issue securities may have an adverse effect on investment and consequently may harm consumers.     

Endogenous Timing in a Mixed Duopoly: Price Competition

The endogenous order of moves is analyzed in a mixed duopoly for differentiated goods, where firms choose whether to set prices sequentially or simultaneously. It is shown that, in contrast to the private duopoly where firms set prices sequentially, in the mixed duopoly firms choose prices simultaneously. Moreover, the result obtained in the mixed duopoly under price competition differs from the one under quantity competition, since in the latter case decisions are taken sequentially.