The Price Effects of the Delta/Northwest Airline Merger

This paper examines the price effects of the merger between Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines. Empirical analysis finds that, other things equal, the fares for airport-pairs where Delta and Northwest competed with each other prior to the merger did not increase by much following the merger. This result is consistent with the additional finding that the impact of changes in low-cost carrier competition is large while the effect of changes in competition from legacy carriers is slight. Since both Delta and Northwest Airlines are legacy carriers, the results for other legacies suggest that the merger should not have exerted a dramatic impact on fares.     

The economics of international codesharing: an analysis of airline alliances

International airline alliances allow airlines to coordinate their operations in providing international service. This paper analyzes the effect of such alliances on traffic levels, fares, and welfare. In the model, the benefits of alliances arise because cooperative pricing of trips by the partners puts downward pressure on fares in the interline city-pair markets (these are markets where travel on both carriers is necessary). The loss of competition in the interhub market, which connects the hub cites of the partners, generates a countervailing effect, tending to raise the fare in that market. While the presence of economies of traffic density complicates these impacts by generating cost links across markets, simulation analysis shows that the above tendencies typically prevail. Welfare analysis shows that both consumer and total surplus typically rise following formation of an alliance despite the harm to interhub passengers, suggesting that the positive effects of alliances may outweigh any negative impacts.     

City-Pairs Versus Airport-Pairs: A Market-Definition Methodology for the Airline Industry

This paper provides a methodology for deciding which airports warrant grouping in multi-airport metropolitan areas. The methodology is based on the comparability of incremental competition effects from nearby airports on average fares at a metropolitan area’s primary airport. Results from a quarterly panel data set for the period 2003–2009 provide strong evidence that city-pairs, rather than airport-pairs, are the appropriate market definition for analyses of passenger air transportation involving many (but not all) large metropolitan areas. Based on the proposed method, we offer a recommended list of airports that should be grouped when creating city-pairs for the analysis of competition in the US domestic airline industry.     

Convenient flight connections vs. airport congestion: Modeling the ‘rolling hub’

This paper provides the first analysis of the trade-off between convenient flight connections and airport congestion, a fundamental but untreated element in the economics of hub-and-spoke networks. A continuous spatial model illustrates this trade-off in a framework where a small gap between flight operating times raises congestion while also shortening a connecting passenger’s layover time. When the passenger’s cost per unit of layover time rises, the monopoly airline chooses to narrow the gap between its flights, yielding shorter layovers but more congestion. A discrete spatial model, where flights congest one another only if they operate in the same discrete period, makes this layover-cost effect discontinuous: the monopoly carrier concentrates (deconcentrates) its flights when this cost is high (low) relative to the costs of congestion. When fringe carriers are present, however, the hub carrier always concentrates its flights, either partially or fully. But the presence of a second hub carrier leads to an equilibrium mirroring the monopoly outcome: the carriers concentrate their flights in different periods when the layover cost is high and deconcentrate them otherwise. The paper also presents a welfare analysis, showing that movement from the equilibrium to the social optimum typically requires greater carrier separation.     

Airport deregulation: Effects on pricing and capacity

We use a model of vertical relations between two congestible airports and an airline oligopoly to examine, both analytically and numerically, how deregulation may affect airports prices and capacities. We find that: (i) unregulated profit-maximizing airports would overcharge for the congestion externality and, compared to the first-best, would induce large allocative inefficiencies and dead-weight losses. They would restrict capacity investments but, overall, would induce fewer delays; (ii) Welfare maximization subject to cost recovery performs quite well, achieving congestion levels similar to a private-unregulated airport but without inducing such large traffic contraction; this puts a question mark on the desirability of deregulation of private airports; (iii) Increased cooperation between airlines and airports provides some improvements, but the resulting airport pricing strategy leads to a downstream airline cartel; (iv) When schedule delay costs effects are strong and airline differentiation is weak, it may be optimal to have a single airline dominating the airports, but this happens only when airports' pricing schemes render the number of airlines irrelevant for competition.     

The Finnish telecommunications market: Advantage of local access incumbency

The introduction of long distance and local competition in the sophisticated Finnish market in 1994 has resulted in unparalleled growth of the Finnet group of companies, which is the incumbent in local markets and the entrant in the long distance market. The former long distance monopolist, Telecom Finland, has gained little market share in local markets. Finnet’s success was due to its hold on the local access bottleneck, the initial lack of number portability when switching carriers and its right to refuse resale of its access lines to Telecom Finland (both until June 1997). The Finnish case illustrates the importance of ownership of the local loop, even in the face of numerous independent local-only operators.     

Cheap Exclusion in Markets with Multiple Complements

We extend the theory of exclusive dealing in first-mover environments to settings where the incumbent seller’s product is used with multiple complements in a distribution chain and the incumbent can sign exclusive dealing contracts with more than one of them. The model is motivated by the market for biosimilar pharmaceuticals, where incumbent sellers that face a threat of entry can sign exclusionary contracts with both providers and insurance carriers prior to entry. We show that when the incumbent’s complementors are vertically related, it can be profitable for the incumbent to sign exclusive contracts with indirect buyers, who operate downstream from the direct buyers of the product. Under linear pricing, such exclusion is profitable if the pass-through rate is sufficiently low, and under nonlinear pricing and symmetric Nash bargaining, it is profitable for all pass-through rates. Complementors face a more severe coordination problem than independent buyers that can make anticompetitive exclusion more likely and especially cheap.     

Market share and price determination in the contemporary airline industry

This paper examines airline pricing and market structure determination for domestic airport-pair routes. The model includes variables to control for the effects of congestion, consumer brand preferences, barriers to entry into airports, and multiple airport availability within a city. The results indicate the noncontestability of airline markets, but certain factors can mitigate a carrier's endpoint dominance. Additionally, the need for policies addressing airport congestion is indicated by several aspects of model results.     

The mixed blessing of a deregulatory endpoint for the public switched telephone network

Receiving authority to dismantle the wireline public switched telephone network (PSTN) will deliver a mixture of financial benefits and costs to incumbent carriers and also jeopardize longstanding legislative and regulatory goals seeking ubiquitous, affordable and fully interconnected networks. Even if incumbent carriers continue to provide basic telephone services via wireless facilities, they will benefit from substantial relaxation of common carriage duties, no longer having to serve as the carrier of last resort and having the opportunity to decide whether and where to provide service. On the other hand, incumbent carriers may have underestimated the substantial financial and marketplace advantages they also will likely lose in the deregulatory process. Legislators and policy makers also may have underestimated the impact of no longer having the ability to impose common carrier mandates that require carriers to interconnect so that end users have complete access to network services regardless of location.This paper will identify the potential problems resulting from prospective decisions by National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs), such as the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to grant authority for telecommunications service providers to discontinue PSTN services. The paper also will consider whether in the absence of common carrier duties, private carriers providing telephone services, including Voice over the Internet Protocol (VoIP), voluntarily will agree to interconnect their networks. The paper will examine three recent carrier interconnection issues with an eye toward assessing whether a largely unregulated marketplace will create incentives for carriers to interconnect networks so that consumers will have ubiquitous access to PSTN replacement and other broadband services.The paper concludes that private carrier interconnection models and information service regulatory oversight may not solve all disputes, or promote universal service public policy goals. Recent Internet interconnection and television program carriage disputes involving major players such as Comcast, Level 3, Fox, Cablevision and Google point to the possibility of increasingly contentious negotiations that could result in balkanized telecommunications networks with at least temporary blockages to desired content and services by some consumers.     

产品设计作为竞争策略的PRO 供应链生产决策研究

对于大多数无力自建WEEE 回收体系的生产企业选择加入PRO 是明智的选择。本文基于行业PRO 运作模式,构建了由两制造商和回收商联盟组成的供应链模型,将与市场增长挂钩的产品设计作为其中一制造商的竞争策略,研究了产品设计和回收双责任要求下供应链各主体的生产决策问题。研究发现：（1）当产品设计成本较低和市场增量较高时,以产品设计作为竞争策略的在位制造商可以淘汰竞争制造商;（2）当产品设计成本低于市场增量时,在位制造商的生产决策优于竞争制造商。一定条件下,竞争制造商存在“搭便车”行为;（3）产品设计降低了处理成本,但损害了回收商经济效益,回收商抵制过度产品设计,并通过转移价格实现供应链主体的利润配置。当经济驱动下回收商自愿回收时,更高的政府回收率会导致整个供应链经济效益变好;（4）存在一个三方共赢局面使三者经济效益都更优,存在一个双赢局面使回收商和在位制造商更优。     

Bidder Asymmetry in Infrastructure Procurement: Are There any Fringe Bidders?

Asymmetric auctions are among the most rapidly growing areas in the auction literature. The potential benefits from intensified auction competition could be enormous in the public procurement context. Entrant bidders are considered a key to enhance competition and break potential collusive arrangements among incumbent bidders. Asymmetric auction theory predicts that weak (fringe) bidders would bid more aggressively when they are faced with a strong (incumbent) opponent. Using data from official development projects, this paper shows that entrants actually submitted aggressive bids in the presence of incumbent(s) in the road sector and to a certain extent in the water sector. For electricity projects, the general competition effect is found to be particularly significant, but the entrant effect remains unclear. The results suggest that auctioneers should foster competition in public procurement, including fringe bidders, to contain public infrastructure investment costs.     

The Relative Importance of Actual and Potential Competition: Empirical Evidence From the Pharmaceuticals Market

We study actual and potential competition and other factors that determine price paths of brand-name drugs in the Swedish pharmaceuticals market. The results indicate that the price of the incumbent product is lowered by potential competition, entry of (additional) generics, and the introduction of a so-called reference-price system. We also identify a 'ratchet' effect, through which price regulation makes entry-deterring limit-pricing credible.     

HOW DOES THE INTERNET INFLUENCE PRICE DISPERSION? EVIDENCE FROM THE AIRLINE INDUSTRY*

I estimate the Internet's effect on the level and dispersion of airline fares on a given route within and across firms. The results suggest that increases in Internet penetration reduce average price and lead to higher intrafirm price dispersion, while increases in Internet penetration do not affect interfirm price dispersion on a given route. Internet penetration affects average fares most in competitive markets. These results suggest that the Internet has significantly but subtlely influenced domestic airline competition. The effect of the Internet on prices and price dispersion is larger on direct flights.     

Duopolistic competition between independent and collaborative business-to-business marketplaces

This paper studies imperfect price competition between two intermediaries in an electronic business-to-business matching market with indirect network externalities. The intermediaries have different ownership structures: an independent incumbent competes with a collaborative buy side consortium to attract buying and selling firms. When firms can register exclusively with one intermediary, the incumbent can deter entry only if the number of consortium owners is sufficiently small. Otherwise, the consortium can enter and monopolize the market. When firms can register with both intermediaries simultaneously, the consortium can always enter and both intermediaries stay in the market with positive profits.     

Losing by winning: The danger zone of adverse competitor replacement

Research Summary: We use a formal model, motivated by a case study from the airline industry, to consider an industry structure wherein a firm may find that improving its competitiveness hurts its performance. Specifically, we examine the possibility that a superior incumbent may, by getting stronger, drive a weak rival from the market, and thereby allow a stronger rival to enter in its place. Such “adverse competitor replacement” reduces the profit of the superior incumbent and may even, in an extreme case, cause the superior incumbent to be driven from the market as well. We show that adverse competitor replacement can arise under a rational equilibrium and may become more likely if a firm improves its capability for self‐improvement. Managerial Summary: Managers are consistently advised to improve the competitiveness of their firms and beat the competition. We examine the possibility that beating out the competition may have adverse consequences. Specifically, a strong incumbent may, by getting stronger, outcompete a weaker rival to such an extent that the weaker rival exits the market, thereby creating an open market niche for a stronger rival to enter, in effect, a form of adverse competitor replacement. Competing with this stronger rival may in turn reduce the strong incumbent's profits below what they had been before driving the weak rival out. We illustrate adverse competitor replacement with a case study from the airline industry and discuss implications for a firm's investment in its own competitiveness.     

The role of competition and regulation in stimulating innovation – Telecommunications

The telecommunications sector is innovative and its innovations strongly affect the growth of the rest of the economy. While regulatory policy has therefore shifted towards innovation as its major goal besides enabling competition, there appear to be tensions between regulation, competition and innovation. This paper identifies as the roots of these tensions the consumer protection objective enshrined in regulatory legislation and the regulatory neutrality issues arising from stranded assets, loss of labor rents, loss of services by captive customers, and the threat to regulators from looming deregulation, all of which are associated with innovations. This paper identifies some similar threats to innovation in unregulated sunk-cost industries with a monopolistic incumbent. A very simple model shows that a comparison of innovation incentives in such an unregulated industry with a regulated one leads to ambiguous results. However, the prospect of converting a regulated industry into an unregulated one after the innovation has occurred will unambiguously increase innovation incentives.     

Pricing Network Interconnection: Advantages Held by Integrated Telecom Carriers

A recurring telecommunications policy debate centers on whether incumbent, vertically integrated local exchange carriers have an incentive to discriminate in price against down-stage service rivals who interconnect to their network (a price squeeze). The concern is typically voiced in one of two claims: (1) there is an incentive for an incumbent to use a price squeeze when access prices are set above long-run incremental cost; or (2) prices set at that cost are preferred for interconnection because they eliminate incentives for a price squeeze. In principle, form (1) is generally true (Proposition 1), but form (2) is generally not (Proposition 2), The proof of these Propositions reveals why pricing access at long-run incremental cost coupled with appropriate price floors in the down-stage market does eliminate the incentive to squeeze.     

How will telecommunications bundles impact competition and regulatory analysis?

In this article, one makes two points about the impact of bundles on competition and regulatory policy. First, one argues that the growing importance of bundles requires an adjustment in the current framework of relevant product markets for individual services, and that the traditional tools of competition policy, namely the SSNIP test, can be adjusted to deal with these new circumstances. Second, one argues that the technological and behavioral changes, underlying the emergence of bundles, call for a shift of emphasis in regulatory policy from ensuring access to the incumbent’s fixed telecommunications network services to ensuring access to television content.     

Airport congestion and capacity when carriers are asymmetric

This study investigates pricing and capacity investment for a congested airport served by multiple carriers. Removing the symmetric carrier assumption, when airlines’ market shares are potentially asymmetric, the socially non-discriminatory optimal charge rule should include an additional term that corrects the distortion caused by pricing itself. The first-best outcome cannot be achieved, and the airport overinvests under the non-discriminatory optimal charge. However, if the airport levies discriminatory charges respective to carriers, the first-best outcome can be achieved and capacity investment is socially efficient under discriminatory optimal charges. In addition, the discriminatory optimal charges levied on a carrier with a larger (smaller) market share are lower (higher).     

The impact of non-neutral federal regulatory policy on competition

We present a duopoly competition model to illustrate how the simultaneous incorporation of two US federal regulatory programs negatively affected telecommunications competition during the past decade. Our model shows that the simultaneous implementation of the Universal Service Fund policy that grants subsidies to incumbent telecommunications providers serving in high-cost areas, and the carrier of last resort policy that mandates incumbents to provide service in under-served geographic areas, deters competitive entry in low-cost markets and thereby runs counter to the objectives for which the policies were intended. This model provides a theoretical explanation of a failure of federal policy.