Chain-Store Pricing Across Local Markets

Chain‐stores now dominate most areas of retailing. While retailers may operate nationally or even internationally, the markets they compete in are largely local. How should they best operate pricing policy in respect of the different markets served—price uniformly across the local markets or on a local basis according to market conditions? We model this by allowing local market differences, with retail markets differing by their size and the number of players present. We show that practising price discrimination is not always best for a chain‐store. Competitive conditions exist under which uniform pricing can raise profits.     

Consumer Stockpiling and Price Competition in Differentiated Markets

In many storable-goods markets, firms are often aware that consumers may strategically adjust purchase timing in response to expected price dynamics. For example, in periods when prices are low, consumers stockpile for future consumption. This paper investigates the dynamic impact of consumer stockpiling on competing firms' strategic pricing decisions in differentiated markets. The necessity of equilibrium consumer storage for storable products is re-examined. It is shown that preference heterogeneity generates differential consumer stockpiling propensity, thereby intensifying future price competition. As a result, consumer storage may not necessarily arise as an equilibrium outcome. Economic forces are also investigated that may mitigate the competition-intensifying effect of consumer inventories and that, hence, may lead to equilibrium consumer storage.     

Markup Pricing and the Auto Industry: A Partial Explanation of Stagflation in an Oligopolistic Economy

A bstract . Price leadership firms and especially wage leadership unions frequently are not operating at points of maximization in the neoclassical sense, because contrived high level demand has brought low price consciousness or elasticity of demand for their commodities or services. Accordingly, they can get higher profits or wages anytime they choose to raise their price except during severe recession. If output falls as a consequence, goveniment and the central hank have stood ready to expand total spending. The contrived high demand has interacted with oligopolistic practices to obviate the distinction between elasticity for the firm and that of its industry, with empirical studies showing demand elasticity commonly not much above unity. The automobile industry is the focus of attention in this study. It appears that stable and high employment market capitalism no longer is possible, because at a minimum t requires generalized maximization behavior, which involves operation against constraining supply and demand parameters.     

中国期铜市场的国际定价功能研究

本文借助现代计量经济分析方法,对上海期货交易所、伦敦金属交易所和纽约商业交易所铜期货价格之间的联系以及各个市场在价格发现中的贡献份额进行了实证研究,研究结果表明:三个市场铜期货价格之间存在协整关系,期货价格之间相互影响、相互作用,一个市场的价格信息将对另外两个相关市场的价格波动产生影响;伦敦期铜市场在国际定价中处于主导地位,纽约市场次之,上海市场的定价能力最小,但上海市场与纽约市场的国际定价能力较为接近。     

Monopoly Pricing as a Consumer Exaction in the Public Utility Sector

A bstract . The many studies on the measurement of deadweight welfare loss due to monopoly pricing have largely ignored the public utility sector of the economy. For the residential customer class in the municipally-owned water industry , the useable formula for the welfare loss triangle depends on the divergence between price and long run marginal cos and the price elasticity of demand Only price is directly observable. Statistical methodology developed here and elsewhere provides unique estimates of marginal cost and elasticity for each utility. The welfare loss, as a percentage of the residential customer class's annual water bill, is 9 to 10 per cent for locally regulated water utilities and 5 to 6 per cent for state regulated utilities–a level above those reported in most of the studies on manufacturing industries. Regulation , however, can make a difference.     

Quality Competition, Insurance, and Consumer Choice in Health Care Markets

In this model, insurance offering a choice of hospitals is valued because consumers are uncertain which hospital they will prefer ex post. A competitive insurance market facilitates tacit price collusion between hospitals; high margins induce hospitals to compete for customers through overinvestment in quality. Incentives may exist to lock in market share via managed-care plans with less choice and lower prices. As technology becomes more expensive, the market increasingly offers too little choice. A pure managed care market may emerge, with underinvestment in quality. Relative to a pure insurance regime, however, all consumers are better off under managed care.     

Middlemen and Oligopolistic Market Makers

This paper studies the endogenous structure of intermediation when heterogeneous intermediaries choose between becoming a middleman or a market maker, and the relation between the equilibrium market structure and price dispersion. We obtain three main results: First, middlemen and oligopolistic market makers can coexist in the market equilibrium. All market makers publicly post unique ask and bid prices. These prices serve as the high and low bounds, respectively, for the ask and bid prices of middlemen, when capacity cost is sufficiently large. Second, more efficient intermediaries choose to become market makers, whereas less efficient intermediaries choose to become middlemen. Third, if the fixed cost of capacity installation for market makers increases, the number of market makers declines, whereas the number of middlemen increases. As a result, both ask prices and bid prices become more dispersed.     

基于消费者剩余的物流服务定价方法研究

在分析现有价格理论在物流服务定价方面局限性的基础上,应用消费者剩余理论,指出物流服务定价的基本理念应该定位于关注顾客需求,提升服务品质,分享双方共赢的利益空间,并以此给出了基于消费者剩余的物流服务定价方法.     

Quality of Information and Oligopolistic Price Discrimination

Recent developments in information technology (IT) have resulted in the collection of a vast amount of customer-specific data. As IT advances, the quality of such information improves. We analyze a unifying spatial price discrimination model that encompasses the two most studied paradigms of two-group and perfect discrimination as special cases. Firms use the available information to classify the consumers into different groups. The number of identifiable consumer segments increases with the information quality. Among our findings (1) when the information quality is low, unilateral commitments not to price discriminate arise in equilibrium; (2) after a unique threshold of information precision such a commitment is a dominated strategy, and the game becomes a prisoners' dilemma; and (3) equilibrium profits exhibit a U-shaped relationship with the information quality.     

欧洲股票市场的规模和动因:基于不同β系数的资本资产定价模型实证研究

我们选用在13个欧洲股市上市的证券,形成规模和动因组合。我们不仅发现规模溢价的证据,还发现8个样本市场存在重大动因收益率。这些收益率可能不构成异常现象,因为它们与不同β值的资本资产定价模型一致。我们还发现,系统风险与经济周期有关。此外,研究结果显示,虽然规模和动因收益率显著,但是难以在中、短期利用它们,因为在我们的样本中只有极少年份它们的数值为正且很大。     

Oligopolistic and competitive behavior of spatially separated markets

We examine the connection between Cournot oligopoly and perfect competition by showing that a fairly general oligopoly model with spatially separated markets generates a general spatial price equilibrium model as an extreme, limiting case. Our analysis depends crucially on the fact that the governing equilibrium conditions of both the oligopoly and the spatial price equilibrium problem can be formulated as variational inequalities.     

寡头竞争型审计市场的培育及其影响分析

本文运用新制度经济学原理,借鉴注册会计师职业发达国家的经验,提出我国应该借助非市场力量推动注册会计师事务所的合并,在审计市场上培育寡头型事务所,从而强化审计师的独立性,提高审计质量。寡头竞争型的审计市场并没有扼制事务所之间的竞争,而是将部分竞争行为内部化,提升了审计市场竞争的层次和水平,即寡头型事务所在审计服务质量、服务效率和服务深度上进行更为有效的竞争。     

执行成本与资产定价:基于我国股市交易数据的理论与实证研究

证券交易的执行成本是信息不对称和市场供需不均衡时投资者买卖证券的风险补偿,是资产定价和市场微观结构的重要研究课题。为此,本文对国外做市商制度下股票执行成本与预期收益理论加以利用和创新,构建出符合我国股市交易制度现状的执行成本与资产定价模型,并提出新颖的“预期收益与执行成本非线性”假设,在此基础上使用交易数据对假设进行实证检验发现,对于我国股市流动性大且执行成本小的资产,其预期收益是相对买卖价差的凹性增函数,而对于流动性小且执行成本大的资产,其预期收益是相对买卖价差的凸性增函数。因此,在指令驱动交易制度下,预期收益是执行成本的分段凸性和整体非线性凹凸增函数。     

An Alternative Perspective On Information Asymmetry; Implications For Consumer Authority In Physician Services Markets

This paper looks at the impact of patient knowledge on utilization and quality in physician services markets, developing a theoretical framework based on an alternative to the "market failure" perspective first proposed by Arrow (1963) . Specifically, this paper looks at how outcomes in physician services markets are determined by whether patient and physician knowledge are substitutes or complements in health production. Empirical testing of the theoretical predictions indicates patient and physician knowledge have changed from substitutes to complements in recent years, and that this change may be hindering a more consumer-driven market from ensuring high quality outcomes.     

期权定价模型及在技术商品定价中的应用

本文在介绍期权定价理论和分析技术商品期权特性的基础上,提出了技术商品的期权定价法,从而为技术商品的定价提供了一条新的途径。     

Pricing and the flat-maximum principle

Profit-maximizing price conditions are well established in economic theory. However, less attention has been directed to the effect on profits of deviations in price from the profit maximizing position. The conditions governing the emergence of a flat-maximum principle are established for both an absolute and relative concept of flatness.     

现代消费者的自我启蒙——从消费目的说起

消费主义诞生于欧美资本主义国家,它的发展前期极大地刺激了生产,促进了经济的发展。但出于资本无限增值的需要而一味地刺激消费,无疑使消费走进了"大峡谷",越来越频繁爆发的经济危机、生态危机已经对人类的贪婪发出了预警。消费者的自我启蒙被提上了日程。