Contracts as Options: Some Evidence from Condominium Developments

This paper values the real estate option to purchase contract in a contingent claims framework. The model is an application of the Black and Scholes option pricing model. Observed market data on the sale of condominiums are used to test if the option is competitively priced under various assumptions regarding the expected instantaneous variance of the condominium price. Simulation results suggest that standard industry practices of charging a fixed amount for the option to purchase roughly conform to pricing behavior dictated by the option pricing model.     

Input Price Discrimination and Allocation Efficiency

This research examines the effects of input price discrimination on allocation efficiency and social welfare. Instead of assuming constant marginal costs, we allow downstream firms to produce under increasing marginal costs. When downstream firms operate in separate markets, even though total output remains unchanged, consumer surplus and social welfare could be greater under discriminatory pricing than under uniform pricing. Moreover, the social desirability of input price discrimination can still hold true when downstream firms compete either in Cournot or Bertrand fashion.

     

Pro-competitive Price Beating Guarantees: Experimental Evidence

We report experimental results on duopoly pricing with and without price beating guarantees (PBG). In two control treatments, price beating is either imposed as an industry-wide rule or offered as a business strategy. Our major finding is that when price beating guarantees are imposed as a rule or offered as an option, effective prices are equal to or lower than those in a baseline treatment in which price beating is forbidden. Also, when price beating is treated as a business strategy, less than 50% of subjects adopted the guarantee, suggesting that, subjects realize the pro-competitive effects of the guarantee. JEL Classifications: C91, L11.This revised version was published online in April 2005 with corrections to one of the authors name and to the page numbering.     

建材价格异动对固定价格合同履行影响的研究

固定价格合同是常见的施工承包合同形式,但是采用固定价格合同时承包方将承受较高的风险,特别是近年来建材价格异常变动加剧,使固定价格合同难以正常履行.<合同法>等相关法律为固定价格合同在难以履行的情况下进行调整提供了法律依据,2009年最高人民法院以司法解释的形式明确了情势变更原则,使得应用情势变更原则调整固定价格合同有法可依.文章对南京市施工企业的实地调研为固定价格合同的调整和情势变更原则的应用提供了现实依据.     

Spatial Price Discrimination: The Use of Parking Coupons by Downtown Retailers

Price discrimination in monopolistically competitive markets affects firms' joint profits through several pecuniary and nonpecuniary externalities. Discrimination is a public good if the net effect is positive. Using a random utility shopping destination choice model we investigate the effect of a downtown parking coupon program that discriminates in favor of suburban consumers and against consumers based downtown. The program appears profitable for downtown stores collectively, but in the noncooperative Nash equilibrium stores do not participate. Participation is thus subject to free-riding. As the subsidy rate required to induce participation rises, profits fall. Whatever the subsidy rate, social surplus declines.     

Antitrust Versus Regulatory Merger Review: The Case of Electricity

This paper focuses on the implications of multi-agency review of electricity mergers. It highlights fundamental differences between regulatory and antitrust merger enforcement procedures–ranging from standards of review to data collection, economic analysis, and remedies. Such disparities potentially introduce costly and potentially conflicting redundancy into the merger review process. Illustrative examples are drawn from a number of cases, including apparent inconsistencies across applicant-filed analyses in FERC merger cases. Absent the delegation of competition analysis to the antitrust agencies, the paper makes the case for harmonizing review across regulators and antitrust enforcers.     

Durability Versus Concentration as an Explanation for Price Inflexibility

We document the extent of price rigidity across United States manufacturing industries in the 1980s and early 1990s and compare rigidity across different phases of the business cycle. We measure price rigidity in three ways – each under four different sets of assumptions. We take an approach that relies on disaggregated data; we look at price patterns for over 4000 individual manufactured commodities. Both durability and seller concentration are found to be important factors explaining differences in price rigidity across industrial product classes. Using our data, we replicate the regression results found in Carlton (1986) that were based on actual transaction prices from the 1960s.     

企业社会责任观的演进与发展:基于综合性社会契约的理解

利益相关者理论与主流企业理论在企业社会责任fq题上存在着根本的分歧，但从历史的视角来审视企业社会责任观的演进可以发现，企业社会责任与利益相关者的利益要求是紧密结合在一起的。企业在履行其囊括显性契约与隐性契约在内的综合性社会契约时，必须考虑其利益相关者合理的利益要求，进而主动承担起应有的社会责任。     

Railroads and Price Discrimination: The Roles of Competition, Information, and Regulation

I evaluate railroad price discrimination in three periods: 1870–1886, before the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act; 1945–1975, when rates were regulated but railroads faced extensive intermodal competition; and 1980–2010, after the passage of major regulatory reforms. While price discrimination was widespread in each period, the specific practices varied as the nature of competition, regulation, and the information available to decision-makers changed. The Act focused heavily on price discrimination, and limited some practices while encouraging others. One major weakness of the Act was the restrictions that were imposed on pricing practices that could lead to cost reductions and productivity improvements.     

Racial Test Score Differences as Evidence of Reverse Discrimination: Less than Meets the Eye

Herrnstein and Murray assume that test score gaps between blacks and whites attending the same schools or in the same jobs must result from the application of different selection criteria to blacks and whites. To the contrary, we show that race-blind screening processes normally will produce large gaps between the test scores of blacks and whites.     

The Assessment of Exclusive Contracts: The Competition Case Against Computicket in South Africa

Review of Industrial Organization - This article reviews an abuse of dominance decision against the main outsourced ticketing firm in South Africa. The decision of the Competition Tribunal in...     

Prices and Price Dispersion on the Web: Evidence from the Online Book Industry

Using data collected between August, 1999, and January, 2000, covering 399 books, we examine pricing by thirty-two online United States-based bookstores. At the aggregate level, we find that both advertising and competitive structure had the predicted effects. More competition led to lower prices and to lower price dispersion. Holding competitive structure constant, more widely advertised items also had lower prices. At the firm level, we observe considerable heterogeneity in behavior. Firms had differentiated (or attempted to differentiate) on dimensions such as brand, price, and selection.     

Indirect Damages from Price Fixing: The Alabama Lysine Case

Indirect damages to broiler and pork producers fromsupra-competitive pricing of synthetic lysine, whichis an important feed additive, are discussed in thisarticle. Indirect damages occur in fundamentallydifferent ways in the two industries because thebroiler industry is vertically integrated while thepork industry was dominated by independent producersduring the 1992–1995 time period. Pass-through ofhigher lysine prices to hog feed purchasers isdemonstrated with regression analysis of purchasesof a feed premix containing synthetic lysine and aregression analysis of purchases of synthetic lysinefrom feed dealers.     

Spatial Price Discrimination in Input Markets with an Endogenous Market Boundary

This paper examines the welfare effect of third-degree price discrimination in a vertically related market with one upstream monopolist that sells its input to a continuum of downstream markets. Assume that the market boundary of the monopolist is endogenously determined. It is found that social welfare is necessarily lower under discriminatory than uniform pricing, even if the market area of the former is greater than that of the latter. This finding is contrary to that in the extant literature on price discrimination in final goods markets.     

A Note on Input Price Discrimination Under Bertrand Competition: Simultaneous vs. Sequential Contracting

Review of Industrial Organization - By allowing the supplier to contract simultaneously or sequentially with asymmetric retailers under Bertrand competition, we analyze the welfare implications of...     

Stock Price and Management Changes: The Case of REITs

This paper examines the relationship between a Real Estate Investment Trust's (REIT's) stock returns and top management changes. The results indicate an inverse relationship between the probability of a management change and a REIT's recent stock price performance. This is consistent with internal monitoring of management activities by the board of directors, other top managers, or large block shareholders.     

我国彩电产业的价格竞争、价格战与产业绩效

一、彩电产业价格战诱因与动机的初步分析从 2 0世纪 80年代初期至 1 990年为止 ,我国彩色电视机产量和销量都获得了较大的增长。 1 985～ 1 990年 ,彩电产量与市场销量分别从 435 .3万台和 378.6万台增加到 1 0 33万台和980万台。随着国内彩电厂商生产规模的扩大 ,规模经济因素逐渐发挥作用 ,一些在成本结构上具有优势的企业为了更好地扩张规模 ,开始运用价格竞争手段。例如 ,四川长虹于 1 989年率先发起了价格战 ,这为行业领先企业迅速扩大市场份额提供了基础。不过 ,价格竞争在这一时期对业内企业带来的冲击力 ,被两个因素所大大缓解。一…     

From the laboratory to the marketplace: Case history of an innovation

The author traces the sequence of events from basic discovery and conception of a new, revolutionary sweetener to its commercialization, and answers the question: Why did it take so long?