Price competition when consumer behavior is characterized by conformity or vanity

It has long been recognized that the pleasure of consuming a good may be affected by the consumption choice of other consumers. In some cases, social pressures may lead to conformity; in some others, individuals may feel the need of exclusiveness under the form of vanity. Such externalities have proven to be important in several markets. However, the market implication of these externalities are still unclear. To investigate them, we propose to combine the consumption externality model and the spatial duopoly model. When conformity is present but not too strong, both firms remain in business but price competition is fiercer and results in lower prices. The market share of the large firm increases with the population size; as the population keeps rising, the large firm may serve the entire market and set a price that has the nature of a limit price. When conformity is strong enough, different equilibria may exist. In most of these equilibria, a single firm captures the whole market. At the other extreme, when vanity is at work, price competition is relaxed.     

Price normalization under imperfect competition

In general equilibrium models of imperfect competition the equilibria depend on how prices are normalized. This note shows that a price normalization preserves convexity properties if and only if prices are measured in terms of a fixed commodity bundle. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for helpful comments, inspiring a simplification in the proof of the main result, and the argument in the Remark.     

Markov perfect equilibria in industries with complementarities

Summary.   This paper considers the existence and computation of Markov perfect equilibria in games with a “monotone” structure. Specifically, it provides a constructive proof of the existence of Markov perfect equilibria for a class of games in which a) there is a continuum of players, b) each player has the same per period payoff function and c) these per period payoff functions are supermodular in the player's current and past action and have increasing differences in the player's current action and the entire distribution of actions chosen by other players. The Markov perfect equilibria that are analyzed are symmetric, not in the sense that each player adopts the same action in any period, but rather in the sense that each player uses the same policy function. Since agents are typically distributed across many states they will typically take different actions. The formal environment considered has particular application to models of industries (or economies) in which firms face costs of price adjustment. It is in this context that the results are developed. Received: November 9, 1999; revised version: February 10, 2000     

Bequests, Inter Vivos Transfers, and Wealth Distribution

This paper constructs a heterogeneous agent overlapping generations model with bequests and inter vivos transfers. In the model, households in the same family line behave strategically to determine their consumption, working hours, gifts, and savings. Calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, the paper measures time preference and parental altruism consistent with the economy's capital-output ratio and the size of intergenerational transfers. The model with intergenerational transfers better explains, although not fully, the wealth distribution of the United States. The paper also analyzes the effects of government policy changes on wealth accumulation, distribution, and social welfare. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D31, D64, D91, H31.     

Population growth and technological change in a global warming model

Global warming (GW) is now recognized as a significant threat to sustainable development on an international scale. After providing some introductory background material, we introduce a benchmark dynamic game within which to study the GW problem. The model allows for population growth and is subsequently generalized to allow for changes in technology. In each case, a benchmark “Business as Usual” (BAU) equilibrium is analyzed and contrasted with the efficient solution. Furthermore, a complete characterization is provided in the benchmark model of the entire subgame perfect equilibrium value correspondence.JEL Classification Q54, D99, O12This paper builds on the Woytinsky Lecture delivered by Roy Radner at the University of Michigan, March 11, 1998. We would like to thank Graciela Chichilnisky, Arnulf Grubler, Geoffrey Heal, Leonid Hurwicz, Jill Jaeger, Peter de Janosi, Paul Kleindorfer, Giuseppe Lopomo, Thomas Schelling, Tapan Mitra, and Michael Toman for helpful discussions and references, and Andrew King, Charlotte V. Kuh, and Frank Sinden for comments on an earlier draft. In the case of the present enterprise, much of whose scope lies outside of our previous expertise, it is even more important than usual to emphasize that we are responsible for all errors.     

Stochastic bequest games

In this paper, we prove the existence of a stationary Markov perfect equilibrium for a stochastic version of the bequest game. A novel feature in our approach is the fact that the transition probability need not be non-atomic and therefore, the deterministic production function is not excluded from consideration. Moreover, in addition to the common expected utility we also deal with a utility that takes into account an attitude of the generation towards risk.     

The potential for underinvestment in internet security: implications for regulatory policy

With the continuing growth of the use of the Internet for business purposes, the consequences of a possible cyber attack that could create a large scale outage of long time duration becomes a more and more serious economic issue. In this paper, we construct a game-theoretic model that addresses the economic motivations for investment in added Internet security and makes a case for a possible market failure in the form of underinvestment in the provision of Internet security. This result relies on the fact that the social value derived from consumption (which is at least equal to a fraction of the surplus derived from e-commerce) greatly exceeds the revenue at stake associated with the telecommunications companies’ and ISP’s security levels. If the ratio of social value to revenue at stake to Internet providers continues to grow, the likelihood of underinvestment in security becomes higher and some form of regulation may become necessary. We discuss the difficulties associated with designing and enforcing a regulatory scheme based upon mandatory security standards.      

Price competition in markets with customer testing: the captive customer effect

We introduce product differentiation into the analysis of price competition in markets where suppliers test customers in order to assess whether they will pay for received goods or services. We find that, if the degree of differentiation is sufficiently high, suppliers may improve the average probability that their clientele will pay by charging higher prices. This helps suppliers to sustain high prices in equilibrium. Moreover, endogenizing locations in product space, we demonstrate that the high price level can be implemented in a pure-strategy subgame-perfect equilibrium with a high degree of differentiation. This is in contrast to the original Hotelling model with linear travel costs where a pure-strategy subgame-perfect equilibrium fails to exist.     

Capacity precommitment as a barrier to entry: A Bertrand-Edgeworth approach

Summary. With few exceptions, the literature on the role of capacity as a strategic entry deterrent has assumed Cournot competition in the post-entry game. In contrast, this paper studies a model in which the incumbent and entrant sequentially precommit to capacity levels before competing in price. Interesting deterrence effects arise because firms need time to build, that is, cannot adjust capacity instantaneously in the post-entry game. This approach produces a simple and intuitive set of equilibrium behaviors and generates clear predictions about when these different outcomes are likely to arise. Our model also departs substantially from the existing literature in concluding that sunkness of capacity costs is neither necessary nor sufficient for capacity to have precommitment value. Received: August 25, 1999; revised version: October 15, 1999     

On continuous-time Markov processes in bargaining

For bilateral stochastic bargaining procedures embedded in stable homogeneous continuous-time Markov processes, we show unusual limit results when time between rounds vanish. Standard convergence results require that some states are instantaneous.     

Intellectual Property Rights and Crop-Improving R&D under Adaptive Destruction

This paper studies how the strength of intellectual property rights (IPRs) affects investments in biological innovations when the value of an innovation is stochastically reduced to zero because of the evolution of pest resistance. We frame the problem as a research and development (R&D) investment game in a duopoly model of sequential innovation. We characterize the incentives to invest in R&D under two competing IPR regimes, which differ in their treatment of the follow-on innovations that become necessary because of pest adaptation. Depending on the magnitude of the R&D cost, ex ante firms might prefer an intellectual property regime with or without a “research exemption” provision. The study of the welfare function that also accounts for benefit spillovers to consumers—which is possible analytically under some parametric conditions, and numerically otherwise—shows that the ranking of the two IPR regimes depends critically on the extent of the R&D cost.