Profitability of Office Rental Market in Seoul: An Application of Simultaneous Structural Equations

This article is concerned with the estimation of excess rates of return on the office rental market in Seoul using a simultaneous structural equation model. The office rental market in Seoul is spatially divided into CBD and non-CBD, and the model has three behavior equations of Chonsei price, monthly rent and key deposit, with two identity equations of conversion rate and excess rate of return. This article reveals that it would be rational for the owners to ask tenants for a higher deposit with a lower monthly rent under increasing interest rates because the interest rate has a positive effect on the Chonsei deposit and the key deposit, but a negative effect on the monthly rent. Although high nominal interest rate and low economic growth reduce the excess rate of return on both submarkets, the non-CBD office rental market would be more profitable than the CBD market despite lower levels of the monthly rent and key deposit.     

Do Deposit Rates Cause Mortgage Loan Rates?: The Evidence from Causality Tests

This paper applies two familiar causality detection techniques to the issue of whether it is costs that determine prices or vice versa in the mortgage loan market. The question is posed in terms of causal priority: Are savings and loan deposit rates causally prior to mortgage loan rates or is it the other way around? For the time period prior to the onset of deposit interest rate deregulation, the evidence that emerges is consistent with the view that lenders raised their loan rates in response to higher deposit rates of interest. However, for the more recent period of deregulation, the evidence is not consistent with this view.     

Search Cost and Price Dispersion in Vertically Related Markets: The Case of Bank Loans and Deposits

Using data on marginal interest rates of loan and deposit products by Spanish banks, we find that the level of interest rates on loans (deposits) across geographic markets decrease (increase) with the number of banks in each market, and that the level of interest rates on loans increases with the level of interest rates of deposits. We also find that the dispersion of interest rates of both loans and deposits increase with the number of banks. This evidence is interpreted as evidence of customer’s search costs in retail banking, consistent with predictions from the Carlson and McAfee (J Polit Econ 91:480–493, 1983) model of market competition with search costs.     

Do Substantial Horizontal Mergers Generate Significant Price Effects? Evidence From The Banking Industry

This study examines the price effects of recent US bank mergers that substantially increased local market concentration. Using the deposit interest rates that banks offer their customers as our price measure, we find that, over the 1991–94 time period, deposit rates offered by participants in substantial horizontal mergers and their local market rivals declined by a greater percentage than did deposit rates offered by banks not operating in markets in which such mergers took place. We interpret our results as evidence that these mergers led to increased market power.     

中国存款准备金政策的现状及影响研究

对中国存款准备金的现状进行了梳理,将重点放在分析中国准备金政策的实施背景与影响两方面：通过分析我国目前的货币环境,对比相应政策工具的优缺点来说明近几年我国变动准备金率的原因;通过建立回归模型来分析准备金政策对市场利率的影响;通过建立VAR模型,分析法定准备金率的变动对货币供给、贷款以及超储率的影响。进而提出对于准备金政策合理实施的几点建议。     

Multimarket contact in Italian retail banking: Competition and welfare

This paper studies banks' competitive behavior on the deposit side of the Italian retail banking industry. We use a structural model to estimate demand for deposit services and test several supply models. We find that both the competitive, differentiated product Bertrand and the perfectly collusive models are rejected against partially collusive models with coalitions based on the participants' market contact. In the best fitting collusive model, the coalition includes 8 banks with at least 19 overlapped regions. Banks with extensive multi-market contacts tend to be less competitive and behave as if they were maximizing their profit jointly, taking into account the competitive fringe of smaller banks.     

An Empirical Analysis of UK Credit Card Pricing

Previous studies show that the credit card market is imperfectly competitive. Using a reduced form hedonic model, the current paper demonstrates a relationship between credit card interest rates and product differentiation characteristics. The characteristics capture issuers’ attempts to: (1) screen/separate customers with different default risk characteristics and (2) better meet heterogeneous customer preferences. The results are consistent with risk-based pricing and monopolistic competition in the credit card market.     

Lessons from the deregulation transition in Chile's local telephony market

There is no experience in the world where entry to local telephony has been as significant as in Chile. This paper addresses two related questions: (i) whether the local telephony segment in Chile is competitive enough so as to deregulate rates and (ii) whether competition thus far achieved could be at risk in the case where asymmetric regulation is ended. The paper suggests that the market is competitive enough, that the regulation mechanism is extremely costly, and that subsidizing entry in order to have infrastructure competition is not necessary. It concludes that deregulation of consumer's rates would be in their own consumers’ interest.     

The Integration of Mortgage Markets and Capital Markets

In this paper, we develop a model to predict the impact of deregulation in the form of relaxing interest rate control on the integration between the mortgage credit market and the general credit market. The model is tested through the examination of the long-term Granger-like equilibrium relationship between mortgage interest rates and general interest rates in the pre-1980 regulated vs. the post-1980 deregulated periods. It is shown that the level of regulation, in the form of targeting general interest rate levels, contributes to the segmentation of the mortgage market from the capital market. To test this model, we compare the relationship between mortgage interest rates and general interest rates around 1980 where major control on interest rate levels in capital markets was lifted. Using Engle and Granger's procedure to overcome the estimation problem from nonstationarity in the interest rate series, we are able to find that the two interest rates were cointegrated after 1980 but not before. More importantly, it appears that the two markets were already integrated before the full development of the secondary mortgage markets between 1984 and 1987. Therefore, we conclude that the bulk of the integration between the mortgage and capital markets was completed as a result of the removal of interest rate controls around 1980, in contrast with previous studies that find integration occurred during the mid-1980s primarily as a result of the rapid development of the secondary mortgage markets.     

Market Structure and the Speed of Price Adjustments: Evidence Of Non-Monotonicity

Rational distributed lag and partial adjustment models are used in this paper to analyze the speed of adjustment of consumer deposit rates. Dummy variables conditioned on market concentration are added to the rational distributed lag model to test for speed of adjustment differences across high, medium, and low concentration markets. The estimated model parameters suggest low, as well as high, concentration markets exhibit slower speed of adjustment (or more price rigidity) than the medium group. Thus, the results for the rational distributed lag model estimation provide empirical evidence of a possible non-monotonic relationship between market concentration and price rigidity. This relationship is further examined within the context of a partial adjustment model by estimating the speed of adjustment parameter as a non-linear (quadratic) function of market concentration. The results support the findings derived from the estimation of the rational distributed lag model. These findings have important implications for: (1) future research that attempts to empirically estimate relationships between market structure and price behavior, and (2) antitrust policies that assume reductions in market concentration will always lead to more competitive, presumably less rigid, pricing behavior.     

Firm innovativeness and business performance: The joint moderating effects of market turbulence and competition

To clarify the nature of the effect of firm innovativeness on business performance, this study draws on contingency theory and an interactional perspective to develop a conceptual framework to investigate how the interaction between market turbulence and competitive intensity moderates the relationship between firm innovativeness and business performance. This study used survey data from a sample of 154 high-tech manufacturing firms in Taiwan and employed hierarchical moderated regression analysis to test the hypotheses developed. The results reveal that the effect of firm innovativeness on business performance varies across the different configurations of market turbulence and competitive intensity. Specifically, the performance effect of firm innovativeness is most positive under high market turbulence and high competitive intensity; the performance effect is least positive under low market turbulence and low competitive intensity. However, the performance benefits of firm innovativeness fail to materialize under low market turbulence and high competitive intensity. Overall, these findings highlight that market turbulence and competition jointly influence the direction and strength of the performance effect of firm innovativeness. This study advances firm innovativeness research by identifying the configurational market conditions that augment or limit the value of firm innovativeness.     

The effect of air traffic delays on airline prices

A legislative change in takeoff and landing restrictions at LaGuardia Airport provides an opportunity to study the effect of an exogenous shock to product quality on prices in the airline industry. I test how the price response varies with the degree of competition in the market. I find that prices fall by $1.42 on average for each additional minute of flight delay, and that the price response is substantially larger in more competitive markets.     

Welcome contributor or no price competitor? The competitive interaction of free and priced technologies

The existence of free technologies is prevalent in a variety of industries from software to design. This study examines the competitive interaction between free and priced technologies. I draw on the literature on economic logics to predict that, in general, technologies that are freely shared are likely to stimulate interest and provide useful market information without directly competing with priced technologies. In contrast, due to direct competition, I predict that the prevalence of priced technologies will decrease the sales of other priced technologies. I find support for these hypotheses using a sample of more than 1 million transactions in over 200 distinct markets for MobileApps for the Palm computing platform. This study highlights how free technologies can be utilized to enhance performance of commercial producers. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Market orientation and new-to-the-world products: Exploring the moderating effects of innovativeness, competitive strength, and environmental forces

Recently, there has been a keen research interest in exploring the relationship between market orientation and new product development. The empirical results, however, are mixed, and this means that we do not fully understand these linkages. Furthermore, research concerning the antecedents of new-to-the-world products has focused on the study of a single product. However, it is of obvious interest for organizations to understand what drives a firm's overall performance in the exercise of developing very innovative products. In this empirical study, the authors take a component-wise approach to investigate the effects of market orientation in new-to-the-world product innovation, and examine how other variables interplay with market orientation to affect product development. Firstly, the findings show that both customer and competitor orientations, together with interfunctional coordination, are important drivers of a firm's new-to-the-world product innovation. Secondly, the results indicate that the components of market orientation are differentially moderated by a firm's innovativeness, competitive strength, and also by environmental forces.     

Why are REITS Currently So Expensive?

Over the last several years, the price of listed real estate stocks has been unusually high relative to dividends. I find that neither low interest rates nor low risk premia can account for the high valuation ratios. Lower interest rates have been offset by rising risk premia to keep expected returns close to average. Instead, the market has priced in future income growth on commercial properties far above the growth rates seen in the data. High implied growth rates are less extreme for nontraditional REIT sectors. Income growth expectations are also less extreme for international listed real estate.     

The Changing Liability Structure of Savings and Loan Associations

The paper surveys the key factors, past and future, affecting Savings and Loan Association liability structure. The economic principles underlying Savings and Loan liability management are illustrated with emphasis on the dynamic aspects of decision-making and on the lack of perfect competition within the industry. Specific topics include the matching of asset and liability maturities, liquidity management, discrimination among classes of liabilities, and Regulation Q ceilings. The major shifts in the liability structure of Savings and Loan Associations during the 1970s is then reviewed. Key points include the steadily declining share of passbook accounts, the increasing average maturity of liabilities until 1978, and the ramifications of newly introduced deposit categories such as Money Market Certificates. Finally, the likely liability structure of Savings and Loans during the 1980s is discussed in the context of the removal of Regulation Q ceilings. The necessity for Savings and Loans to offer competitive interest rates on all maturity categories, and to offer deposit liabilities with liquidity features comparable to those available from other sources is emphasized.     

Group Consumption and Product Diversity: The Case of Smoking Bans

I study product diversity in the presence of search costs and groups of consumers. Groups with heterogeneous tastes create a leverage effect on competition: a large majority of firms may end up offering a product that corresponds to the taste of the minority. I illustrate this idea with smoking bans in bars and restaurants. When the first nonsmoking restaurants opened, there were few of them with little competition and high market power on nonsmokers. By extracting a large surplus from nonsmokers, nonsmoking restaurants became unattractive to other groups, while smoking restaurants were plenty and competitive, attracting both smokers and mixed groups.     

Dynamics of dyadic competitive interaction

In this study of firms’ entries into and exits from each other’s markets, we link research on multipoint competition to the emerging action‐oriented, dyadic approach to interfirm rivalry by specifying market interdependencies between pairs of firms that condition their potential for rivalry over time. Our dynamic analysis of competitive interactions between pairs of commuter airlines in California reveals the idiosyncratic and asymmetric market microstructures that characterize dyadic competitive relationships and helps explain why firms grapple vigorously with some of their competitors while being passive toward others. We show that there is an inverted U‐shaped relationship between firms’ rates of entry into and exit from each other’s markets and the level of multimarket contact in competitor dyads. We also show how this basic curvilinear effect varies from dyad to dyad as a function of relative levels of multimarket contact with competitors in other dyads and the relative sizes of competitors in a focal dyad. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Competing in the looking‐glass market: imitation,resources, and crowding

I examine two dominant processes of organizational interdependence—imitation and resource competition—and develop a theory that integrates predictions about firms' propensity to change market locations based on both. The cornerstone of the model is the argument that both processes operate concurrently and are driven by the departure of peer firms from a shared resource space. I also argue that the imitation effect, which reflects shared perceptions and interpretations among ecologically proximate peers, hinges on the competitive intensity faced by each individual organization in its market location. Analyses of U.S. automobile manufacturers' moves between the industry's three main market segments confirm the predictions of the theory and point to the merits of using an ecological approach to the evolution of market segmentation and the formation of industry structure. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

CONSUMER SWITCHING COSTS AND FIRM PRICING: EVIDENCE FROM BANK PRICING OF DEPOSIT ACCOUNTS*

We employ extensive information on bank deposit rates and area migration patterns to examine pricing relationships implied by switching costs. We argue that, because of the trade‐off between attracting new customers and exploiting old ones, banks offer higher deposit rates in areas experiencing more in‐migration. Further, because greater out‐migration implies that a locked‐in customer will not be with the bank for as many periods, banks will offer lower deposit rates in areas exhibiting greater out‐migration. Also, because this effect of out‐migration logically depends on the extent of in‐migration, an interaction effect exists. We find evidence strongly supporting these relationships.