Comparing Merger Policies in the European Union and the United States

We collect a sample of EU and US merger investigations, estimate models of the regulatory decisions, and use the models to compare merger policies. Our approach allows us to decompose observed differences into policy effects and case-mix effects. Focusing on dominance mergers, we find that the EU is tougher than the US on average, in particular for mergers resulting in moderate market shares. However, the US appears to be more aggressive for coordinated interaction and non-dominance unilateral effects cases. Overall, our analysis detects substantial differences in policies, but it does not classify one regime as being more aggressive than the other.     

Consumption Externalities and Diffusion in Pharmaceutical Markets: Antiulcer Drugs

We examine the role of consumption externalities in the demand for pharmaceuticals at both the brand level and over a therapeutic class of drugs. Externalities emerge when use of a drug by others affects its value, and/or conveys information about efficacy and safety to patients and physicians. This can affect the rate of market diffusion for a new entrant, and can lead to dominance of one drug despite the availability of close substitutes. We use data for H₂-antagonist antiulcer drugs to estimate a dynamic demand model and quantify these effects. The model has three components: an hedonic price equation that measures how the aggregate usage of a drug, as well as conventional attributes, affect brand valuation; equations relating equilibrium market shares to quality-adjusted prices and marketing levels; and diffusion equations describing the dynamic adjustment process. We find that consumption externalities influence both valuations and rates of diffusion, and that they operate at the brand and not the therapeutic class level.     

Coordinated Effects in the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines

Recent research has highlighted the quantitative contribution to merger analysis from extending unilateral effects models to understand the payoffs to future potential coordinated effects. Some of the emphasis of this research appears to have made its way into the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines. In this paper, we demonstrate the quantification of coordinated effects in an oligopoly and procurement model, and we show that screens that are based on upward pricing pressure are not adequate in mergers where coordinated effects are a potential concern.     

Mergers,coordinated effects and efficiency in the Portuguese non-life insurance industry

We evaluate the impact on market power and efficiency of a series of mergers on three Portuguese non-life insurance markets. We specify and estimate, with a panel of firm-level data, a structural model which includes: preferences, technology, and a market equilibrium condition. Firms' demand curves are not very elastic. Firms' technologies exhibit scale and scope economies and high cost efficiency scores. We find that, for the period following the mergers, there is no evidence of: (i) an increase in market power through coordinated behavior, or (ii) changes in cost efficiency levels. In addition, social welfare increased.     

The influence of secondary production on industry definition in the extended vertical market model

Secondary production is defined and its role in the estimation of an extended vertical market model b examined. Two impacts on the subject industry are identified, called primary product dominance and primary product focus. A simultaneous equations model consisting of a profit equation and two secondary production equations is estimated using data from the interindustry transactions accounts. The profit equation captures the impact on industry profit of secondary production and of extended market structure. The dominance equation captures the relationship between secondary production and industry profit and scale of production. The focus equation captures the relationship between secondary production and industry profit and excess capacity. The model is estimated for all industries, and the common specification is then applied to industries grouped by type.     

Competition Among Middlemen When Buyers and Sellers Can Trade Directly

This paper examines competition among middlemen when sellers and buyers can trade directly. Direct trade alters the supply and demand facing the middlemen, making them interdependent, and reduces the market power of intermediaries. However, it does not alter the Stahl [1988] result that middlemen may have an incentive to “corner” the market if demand is inelastic. The model is applied to market making in financial markets, vertical integration in goods markets and to the question of bypass in utilities. This discussion suggests that cornering is most likely in markets for essential inputs and that it may enable seller collusion.     

Collinearity in Linear Structural Models of Market Power

The well-known structural model used to estimate market power suffers from a severe collinearity problem if both the marginal cost and demand equations are linear. If the equations hold exactly, the variables are perfectly collinear so the model cannot be estimated. If the true linear model equations hold with errors, one can estimate the equations, but the estimated coefficients are likely to be highly unstable and unreliable due to nearly perfect collinearity.     

The Effect of Government Advertising Policies on the Market Power of Cigarette Firms

We estimate market power among cigarette manufacturers over 1952–1984, a period of uniform pricing. We apply the Bresnahan approach; adjust it to the firm level; employ a dynamic model with habit persistence; and add an advertising equation, which helps identify the parameters, increase degrees of freedom, and constrain parameters so we can interpret our results at the firm level, despite the fact that the equations conform to what we might see in a market model. We consider effects of government interventions upon demand and market power and find, for instance, that the 1971 broadcast advertising ban decreased market power.     

Prospective payments and hospital efficiency

This paper examines the effects of the Prospective Payment System on the behavior of hospitals with respect to their capital allocations and the efficiency with which they produce in-patient care. A theoretical model adapted from Pope [1989] yields the testable hypotheses that as a hospital's Medicare population increases the hospital will supply greater levels of capital and produce in-patient care using less technically efficient methods. A two stage test of these hypotheses is run on a sample of US non-federal hospitals. Results from patient demand functions and a stochastic profit frontier are consistent with the theoretical model.     

Collusion vs. superiority : A Monte Carlo analysis

This paper develops a Monte Carlo procedure which simulates regression equations characteristic of the profit-concentration literature, given knowledge (lacking in empirical work) of the underlying parameters' true values. It is shown that concentration's coefficient in an industry profit-concentration regression may overestimate, underestimate or accurately reflect the impact of monopoly power on price depending on the assumed underlying model. Current empirical evidence, however, tends to be more consistent with the model that predicts concentration overestimates the monopoly power effect.     

A price leadership model for merger analysis

We provide a methodology to simulate the coordinated effects of a proposed merger using data commonly available to antitrust authorities. The model follows the price leadership structure in Miller, Sheu, and Weinberg (2021) in an environment with logit or nested logit demand. The model calibration leverages profit margin data to separately identify the extent of coordinated pricing from marginal costs. Using this framework, we demonstrate how mergers can shift incentive compatibility constraints and thereby lead to adverse competitive effects. The incentive compatibility constraints also affect the extent to which cost efficiencies and divestitures mitigate competitive harms.     

(Non-)Insurance Markets,Loss Size Manipulation and Competition: Experimental Evidence*

The common view that insurer buyer power may effectively counteract provider market power critically rests on the idea that consumers and insurers have a joint interest in pushing for price and cost reductions. We develop theory and provide experimental evidence that the interests of insurers and consumers may be misaligned when insurers have the power to influence the service supplier’s cost. Insurers with such buyer power may benefit from increasing initial loss sizes to create demand for insurance. Insurer competition eliminates their profits but markets do not return to the initial non-insurance state. This constitutes a welfare loss.     

The Demand for Federal Home Loan. Bank Advances by Thrift Institutions: Some Recent Evidence

This paper develops a model of the demand for Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances by thrift institutions. It expands on a model developed in Kent [1983] by accounting for net worth in the balance sheet constraint and for borrowing in excess of the "advances limit." The demand equation is estimated using pooled time-series and cross-sectional data for individual thrift institutions over the period 1979–1986. The results indicate that in addition to the traditional use of advances as a source of liquidity, advances are a particularly attractive source of funds for poorly capitalized institutions. Further, thrifts' demand for advances is responsive to the price of advances, mortgage interest rates, the dividend rate on FHLB stock, and rates on substitute sources of funds.     

Optimization of Thermal Energy Storage Systems in Distributed Generation Systems

The distributed generation as well as the combined production of electrical energy and heat for domestic use in order to increase the energy efficiency becomes more important and both technically and financially feasible. However, feasibility and efficiency can be significantly increased by decoupling the production of heat or power or the referring demand in order to operate the production units in the most efficient way. Thermal storage systems connected to combined heat and power units offer the opportunity of such a decoupling of production and demand for heat in domestic or industrial use. In this article, based on an analysis of different thermal storage technologies, a model is introduced for optimal operation of thermal storage connected to combined heat and power units in terms of the generation costs or contribution margin as extension of an energy generation planning and trading optimization method. Moreover, the application, coordinated operation and participation in spot markets of such plant-storage-combinations are evaluated.     

The effects of the business cycle on oligopoly coordination: Evidence from the U.S. rayon industry

Recent game-theoretic studies of the effects of the business cycle on oligopoly coordination predict that coordination is weakest when demand is high and expected future profit is lower. An empirical model that uses a conjectural elasticity term to measure the degree of coordination is developed to test for these two effects. The rayon industry of the 1930s is one that exhibited significantly non-competitive conduct that appears to have varied, in degree, with fluctuations in demand. Application of the empirical model to data from this industry produces results that support the predictions of recent theoretical models.     

Opening the Black Box: The Internal Labor Markets of Company X

This paper sets out to analyze an internal data set on a Taiwanese auto dealer employing three distinct types of workers. The effects of jobs and levels are positive on both the salary and bonus equations, albeit smaller under a fixed effects than under OLS; however, when factoring in individual fixed effects, the reductions in the bonus equations are greater than those in the salary equations. With changing economic conditions, any consequent variations are greater in bonuses than in salaries, with the most extreme variations being felt by higher ranking employees than lower-level workers. Promotion premiums between levels are smaller than the average differences in pay, and although wage variations do exist within and between levels, the greater effect is on bonuses rather than salaries. The variations in both salaries and bonuses, defined by the coeffficient variations, are also greater in those years when demand is high, as opposed to years of low demand. Entry and exit behavior is observed at all levels, although it is more likely to occur among the lower levels of the hierarchy. Finally, we present strong evidence in support of the cohort effect. Overall, our findings confirm the prevalence of internal labor market (ILM) theories.     

Generic Advertising of Intermediate Goods: Theory and Evidence on Free Riding

We develop a model of generic advertising in the context of vertically dependent markets wherein producers of an intermediate good financially support, through voluntary contributions, a generic advertising campaign aimed at consumers of a final product. The Nash equilibrium is characterized by free riding on the part of upstream firms because of the nature of generic advertising, leading to its underprovision with respect to joint, industry-wide profit maximization. We test the model in the U.S. fluid milk industry focusing on the effects of generic advertising on the intermediate demand for milk, since dairy farmers support the generic advertising. Taking this approach, we find that generic advertising had a positive influence on farm-level demand for milk, but did not achieve joint profit maximization.     

煤电一体化项目财务评价指标比分析

以彬长-国网能源煤电一体化项目为研究背景,提出财务指标比的概念,即煤电一体化投资项目财务指标与煤、电项目分开投资财务指标之间的比值。通过对两种项目投资方式的财务内部收益率、财务净现值、投资回收期及贷款偿还期4个主要财务评价指标比值计算分析,得出煤电一体化项目投资相较于煤、电项目分开投资指标比R{R}IRR,RNPV,RPt,RId中:RIRR,RNPV的值大于1;RPt,RId的值小于1,煤电一体化项目投资比煤、电项目分开投资在财务盈利能力、抗风险能力强,煤电一体化项目投资方案比煤、电项目分开投资方案好。     

An analysis of the determinants of broadband access

This paper extends the analysis of the relative impacts of socioeconomic factors on households’ decision to subscribe to dialup Internet access [Chaudhuri, A., Flamm, K., & Horrigan, J. (2005). An analysis of the determinants of Internet access, presented at the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, Washington, DC, October 1–3] to the decision to subscribe to broadband. A simple cumulative utility (ordered logit) model is rejected in favor of a partial proportional odds model, and the authors found that the decision to purchase any access at all, and the decision to upgrade to broadband, may be affected differently by various socioeconomic factors. The own-price elasticity of broadband demand is statistically significant and has a substantial coefficient value. The cross-price sensitivity of broadband demand with respect to dialup price is also statistically significant, and supports the notion of the two services being substitutes.     

Assessing horizontal mergers under uncertain efficiency gains

The analysis of horizontal mergers hinges on a tradeoff between unilateral effects and efficiency gains. We examine the role of uncertainty in this tradeoff. In theory, the attitude towards uncertainty depends on the curvature of the social objective function. On the one hand, adjustment effects, both on the consumers' and firms' sides, tend to make consumers' surplus and firms' profits convex. On the other hand, pass-through effects may act in the opposite direction. We show that convexity prevails in a number of situations, including the most general linear demand model. Implications for empirical merger analysis are exposed.