Measuring efficiency when competitive prices aggregate differences in product quality and risk

In perfectly competitive markets with homogenous goods, prices aggregate inputs and outputs into a money metric that allows production plans and, hence, firms to be ranked by their profitability. Standard techniques of efficiency measurement use this metric to estimate cost and profit frontiers that identify “best-practice” production, conditioned on these exogenous prices. However, when prices vary due to differences among firms in the quality of outputs and inputs and in how asymmetric informational problems are resolved, both quality and the production of information can be decision variables of the firm, and prices will have endogenous components linked to production decisions. For example, in banking, prices of financial inputs and outputs are linked to credit quality and, hence, to risk and, thus, aggregate both inputs and outputs and their risk characteristics as well as reflect how informational asymmetries in credit markets are ameliorated. This paper argues that these cases pose two serious problems for the standard techniques of efficiency measurement: (1) they underestimate inefficiency because, in conditioning on prices, they fail to account for the effects of suboptimal pricing strategies on profitability; and (2) in ignoring how production plans and pricing strategies affect market-priced risk, the standard techniques neglect the effects of different pricing strategies on the discount rate, on expected profit and, hence, on market value. Two alternative techniques that do not condition their frontiers on prices and that account for risk are described to show how they measure the efficiency of different pricing strategies as well as production plans. These two alternative models for measuring efficiency are employed to study how differences in pricing strategies affect the efficiency and market value of highest-level bank holding companies in the United States in 1994.     

Randomized double auctions: gains from trade,trader roles,and price discovery

Experimental double-auction commodity markets are known to exhibit robust convergence to competitive equilibria under stable or cyclical supply and demand conditions, but little is known about their performance in truly random environments. We provide a comprehensive study of double auctions in a stochastic setting where the equilibrium prices, trading volumes and gains from trade are highly variable across periods, and with commodity traders who may buy or sell their goods depending on market conditions and their individual outcomes. We find that performance in this stochastic environment is sensitive to underlying market conditions. Efficiency is higher and convergence to the competitive equilibrium stronger when the potential gains from trade are high and when the equilibrium spans a wide range of quantities, implying a large number of marginal trades. Speculative re-trading is prevalent, especially among those who have little to gain under equilibrium pricing. Those with the largest expected gains typically earn far less than predicted, while those with little or no predicted earnings gain modestly from speculation, leading to some redistribution of gains from high to low expected earners. Excessive trading volumes are associated with negative efficiencies in markets with low gains from trade, but not in the high-gains markets, where zero-sum trading and re-trading appear to enforce efficiency and near-equilibrium pricing. Buyers earn more relative to their competitive equilibrium benchmark than sellers do. Introducing trader specialization leads to fewer trading errors and higher market efficiency, but it does not eliminate zero-sum trading and re-trading.

     

Trading platform,market volatility and pricing efficiency in the floor-traded and E-mini index futures markets

This study examines the pricing efficiency of E-mini and floor-traded index futures under electronic versus open-outcry trading platforms. By using OLS and quantile regressions to control for changes in market characteristics, we find that pricing errors are smaller in the E-mini markets than the floor-traded markets, thereby confirming that electronic trading has special attractions for arbitrageurs and informed traders. However, during periods of higher volatility, the advantages of speedier execution, anonymity and information efficiency may be offset by arbitrage risks; as a result, larger pricing errors are observed in the E-mini markets. We provide new evidence confirming the important roles in pricing efficiency played by both traditional open-outcry systems and electronic trading systems.     

Reliability Management in Competitive Electricity Markets

This paper examines market design issues for reliability management in competitive power markets. The institutional structure is characterized by a power exchange that conducts electricity market trading, a system operator that operates the electric power system, and a property right system for transimission pricing. In a competitive market, priority insurance fosters market information for determining efficient system reliability levels and induces system operator to maintain system security efficiently. A six-node network example is examined to illustrate the basic insights.     

What Collusion? Unilateral Market Power as a Catalyst for Countercyclical Markups

This paper presents and tests a simple model of competitive and unilateral market power regimes that yields countercyclical markups. Following a decrease in demand in the short run, capacity-constrained firms may have a strong incentive not to lower their prices to the new competitive price. Demand shocks may introduce market power into a previously competitive market. Experimental posted offer markets support this conjecture with complete information on the market structure. With only private information, there appears to be a hysteresis effect concerning supracompetitive prices, i.e., markets with a history of supracompetitive pricing continue to generate supracompetitive prices following demand shocks. However, competitive markets also remain competitive following demand shocks when firms only have private information on costs and capacities.     

Liquidity risk and financial competition: Implications for asset prices and monetary policy

This paper studies the implications of banking competition for capital markets and monetary policy. In particular, I develop a two-sector monetary growth model in which a group of agents is exposed to liquidity shocks and money is essential. Banks insure depositors against such risk and invest in the economy's assets. In this setting, I compare an economy with a perfectly competitive banking sector to an economy with a fully concentrated financial sector. Unlike previous work, banks can have market power in both deposits and capital markets. Compared to a perfectly competitive financial sector, I demonstrate that a monopolistic banking system can have substantial adverse consequences on capital formation, assets prices, and the degree of risk sharing. Furthermore, multiple steady-states can emerge and the economy becomes subject to poverty traps. More importantly, market power in financial markets may overturn the Tobin effect present under a perfectly competitive financial sector. This necessarily happens in economies with high degrees of liquidity risk and low levels of capital formation.     

Pricing dynamics and product quality: the case of antidepressant drugs

The rising prices of pharmaceuticals have generated considerable, and often acrimonious, debate. Yet, there is little conceptual work or empirical evidence on pharmaceutical pricing strategies or on the time paths of these prices. This study provides a conceptual framework describing the interplay between quality and product differentiation in determining the preferred pricing strategy. We hypothesize that higher quality products will engage in price skimming strategies in markets where products are sufficiently differentiated, but will choose a market penetration strategy in markets that are less differentiated. We apply an empirical analysis to brand name antidepressants during the years 1999–2002, a market where differences in quality are modest. A nationally representative data set on drug utilization and expenditures is combined with a physician survey on the quality attributes of drugs to examine the effect of drug quality on pharmaceutical pricing strategies. Results indicate that higher quality antidepressants engage in a market penetration strategy, charging initially lower prices that rise over time. At approximately 6–7 years post-entry, prices of the antidepressant drugs examined converge. Prices of higher quality antidepressants continue to increase thereafter, eventually becoming the highest priced drugs in the therapeutic class. These findings are consistent with a market in which product differentiation is modest and consumers learn which drug works best for them through experience.     

SPATIAL PERFECT COMPETITION: A UNIFORM DELIVERED PRICING MODEL

Abstract.  Spatial competition is often probed in terms of spatial oligopoly and/or monopolistic competition in the literature. This paper considers spatial competition as a form of perfect competition, in the sense that the firms are assumed to be price-takers located at the centre of a market area and practising uniform pricing. It shows that under scale economy competitive equilibria can occur, and may actually be observed in the form of international price differentials. Both a very high price and a very low price can yield conditions of competitive equilibrium in spatially or otherwise separate markets.     

Competition in gas markets

This paper discusses some of the current regulatory issues that arise in gas markets under perfect or imperfect competition. It first presents a benchmark model of gas transportation pricing, when all markets are competitive. Optimal prices and capacities are characterized both without and with a break-even constraint for the transportation operator. Elaborating on this framework, it then studies the appropriate dimensioning of the transportation network when an otherwise unregulated supplier exerts market power. Specifically, it points to the possibility of building up “excess” transmission capacity in order to mitigate local market power.     

Toward a Horizonal Theory of Justice: Efficiency,Equity, Rights and Capabilities in a Free Market Economy

The theory of planning horizons and their relation to pricing, conscience and learning has been explored in some detail in terms of efficiency attributes and ecological health (Jennings 2003, Journal of Economic Issues 39:365-373, 2005, 2007a, b, 2008a). This paper addresses the equity implications of planning horizons in terms of the social role and importance of justice, rights and capabilities in a free market economy. From my earlier work, cooperation—not competition—is seen as the means to longer and broader horizons in an efficiency frame, mitigating any alleged tradeoff against equity issues. The impact of longer horizons on fairness and justice in terms of intentions and outcomes along with rights and capabilities still remains unexplored. This paper reviews the normative aspects of planning horizons, showing how ethical and ecological conscience spreads with horizon effects, strengthening goals of fairness and the internalization of social effects. In this setting, capabilities and empowerment are enhanced by respect for human rights, as social conscience spreads through interhorizonal complementarities. The features of a long-horizon world differ from myopic contexts, specifically in the relation of efficiency to other goals. This paper examines that difference in terms of its equity aspects, with regard to social justice and the role of rights and capabilities in economic cultures.     

Environmental Taxation and Vertical Cournot Oligopolies: How Eco-industries Matter

This article specifies what an optimal pollution tax should be when dealing with a vertical Cournot oligopoly. Polluting firms sell final goods to consumers and outsource their abatement activities to an environment industry. It is assumed that both markets are imperfectly competitive. Thus, the tax is a single instrument used to regulate three sorts of distortions, one negative externality and two restrictions in production. Consequently, the optimal tax rate is the result of a trade-off that depends on the firms’ market power along the vertical structure. A detailed analysis of Cournot-Nash equilibria in both markets is also performed. In this context, the efficiency of abatement activities plays a key-role. It gives a new understanding to the necessary conditions for the emergence of an eco-industrial sector.      

Responsive pricing

We study the efficiency property of responsive pricing, a scheme that proposes to increase prices as a function of the level of capacity utilization in environments where traditional allocation schemes (e.g. competitive markets, non-linear pricing) cannot be implemented in practice. We show that although responsive pricing implements allocations that are arbitrarily close to full capacity utilization (no wasted capacity and no excess demand), these allocations are not always efficient. We identify conditions under which efficiency occurs and discuss implications for the use of responsive pricing. We would like to thank seminar participants at the LSE, Venezia, Toulouse, and Copenhagen as well as Piero Gottardi, Karel Mertens, Marco Ottaviani, Markus Poschke, Karl Schlag, and Sanne Zwart for useful comments.     

Differential Effects of Rail Deregulation on US Grain Producers

The efficiency benefits of US rail industry deregulation have been widely documented. This research provides new insight regarding the accrual of benefits within the US grain industry. A study of rail grain rates from 1980 to 2000 finds railroads decreased rates for all grain shippers. The greatest gain in benefits was to producers in the most competitive market environments. Regions and products with less competitive transportation markets will become increasingly disadvantaged if the trend continues. Rail rates are a key determinant in grain market viability and producer profitability in these rail dominated markets.     

Strategic nonlinear pricing

The objective of this paper is to examine the role of nonlinear strategies in a standard oligopoly framework. We demonstrate that nonlinear pricing may indeed emerge as an equilibrium strategy, but only when firms produce differentiated products, when one firm retains market power due to a cost advantage, or as part of an equilibrium in mixed strategies. In addition, we examine the role of nonlinear pricing in a spatial-competition framework. Our main conclusion is that in highly competitive markets, nonlinear pricing strategies are not likely to emerge as an equilibrium.     

Information acquisition and welfare effect in a model of competitive financial markets

We analyze welfare effect of information acquisition for a model of competitive financial markets with diverse information and rational expectations. We show that in the fully revealing rational expectations equilibrium, each agent’s gain from trade in ex ante utility decreases as more agents become informed. An implication of the result is that market efficiency and ex ante Pareto optimality are not compatible in competitive financial markets with diverse information and rational expectations. Our result can be viewed as complementary to the Grossman paradox, which shows that market efficiency and individuals’ incentives to acquire information are not compatible. This paper is the first step in a projected exploration of welfare effect of information acquisition in models with diverse information.     

Quality Competition and Social Welfare in Markets with Partial Coverage: New Results*

We use a vertical product differentiation model under partial market coverage to study the social welfare optimum and duopoly equilibrium when convex costs of quality provision are either fixed or variable in terms of production. We show the following new results. First, under fixed costs, the social planner charges a uniform price for the single variant that just covers costs of quality provision. Like the duopoly equilibrium, this socially optimal pricing entails a partially uncovered market, but a smaller share of the market is served compared with the duopoly equilibrium. Second, for the variable cost case, it is socially optimal to provide both high‐ and low‐quality variants, but market shares need not be equal. This differs from the result in fully covered markets. Third, in the duopoly equilibrium, the quality spread is too wide under variable costs relative to the social optimum. Under fixed costs, the duopoly produces two variants, but quality is too low relative to the social optimum, which has only one variant.     

Testing for fixity of the labour input under non competitive behaviour in Italian and French manufacturing

The flexibility in labour markets and the degree of competition in output markets are investigated in the context of the Italian and French manufacturing sectors. Conventional wisdom seems to point out that in countries with institutional constraints in the labour market it may not be easier to optimize over labour than over capital. We test whether labour is fixed starting with a measure of labour as total hours worked. As the hypothesis cannot be rejected, we do not proceed to test a further hypothesis, based on the measurement of labour as number of workers. We use a variable cost model supplemented with a markup pricing rule to allow for non competitive market structure. From the results it emerges that the output markets are non competitive. We derive analytically and provide a measurement of both short-run and intermediate-run markups. We also derive a measure of the long-run cost-minimizing level of labour: the ratio of optimal to actual level gives the degree of under- or over-utilization of labour.     

基于再造产品的销售定价策略研究

与传统定价理论类似,制定再造产品的销售价格时也需考虑市场细分、顾客群定位等传统问题。本文研究了基于不同细分市场、产品类别、质量水平及竞争环境下的再造产品的销售定价策略,提出再造产品存在着多种质量水平,基于质量差异的动态定价策略可以让再造企业拥有更好的竞争优势;同时考虑OEM与IR之间的竞争情况,用博弈模型研究了二者如何利用价格手段来防御对手竞争。