When prices hardly matter: Incomplete insurance contracts and markets for repair goods

This paper looks at markets characterized by the fact that the demand side is insured. In these markets, a consumer purchases a good to compensate consequences of unfavorable events, such as an accident or an illness. Insurance policies in most lines of insurance base indemnity on the insured's actual expenses, i.e., the insured would be partially or completely reimbursed when purchasing certain goods. In this setting, we discuss the interaction between insurance and repair markets by focusing, on one hand, upon the development of prices and the structure of markets with insured consumers, and, on the other hand, the resulting backlash on optimal insurance contracting. We show that even in the absence of ex post moral hazard the extension of insurance coverage will lead to an increase in prices as well as to a socially undesirable increase in the number of repair service suppliers if repair markets are imperfect.     

Can product differentiation mitigate conflicts of interest between principal stakeholders? A cournot-bertrand comparison

This paper aims to investigate the impact of product differentiation on the extent of conflict of interest between principal stakeholders (shareholders, employees, and consumers), which is one of the most important concerns of stakeholder-oriented corporate governance. We consider a differentiated duopoly competing either in price or quantity after the wages of employees are negotiated with a labor union. We find that price competition and quantity competition have drastically different implications on whether product differentiation mitigates stakeholders' conflicts. Specifically, product differentiation can mitigate stakeholders' conflicts when firms compete in price, but not when they compete in quantity. Therefore, the product differentiation effect in mitigating stakeholders' conflicts differs across markets characterized by price competition versus quantity competition.     

IMPERFECT SUBSTITUTES FOR PERFECT COMPLEMENTS: SOLVING THE ANTICOMMONS PROBLEM

An integrated monopoly, where two complements forming a composite good are offered by a single firm, is typically welfare superior to a complementary monopoly. This is ‘the tragedy of the anticommons’. We analyse the robustness of such result when competition is introduced for one or both complements. Particularly, competition in only one of the two markets may be welfare superior to an integrated monopoly if and only if the substitutes differ in their quality so that, as their number increases, average quality and/or quality variance increases. Then, absent an adequate level of product differentiation, favouring competition in some sectors while leaving monopolies in others may be detrimental for consumers and producers alike. Instead, competition in both markets may be welfare superior if goods are close substitutes and their number in each market is sufficiently high, no matter the degree of product differentiation.     

Price competition and innovation in markets with brand loyalty

Intuition suggests that in markets with consumer lock-in (‘brand loyalty’), firms with a large customer base earn higher profits. We show for a homogeneous goods duopoly that the intuition can be misleading, as the intensity of price competition depends on the initial market split. We derive mixed-strategy equilibria, and show that competition is often most intense when the market is split evenly. As a result, firms coordinate on an asymmetric split when consumers are not yet attached to firms. We also allow for asymmetric costs, and analyze when firms with a larger customer base are more eager to innovate.     

Efficiency and equilibrium when preferences are time-inconsistent

We consider an exchange economy with time-inconsistent consumers whose preferences are additively separable. If consumers have identical discount factors, then allocations that are Pareto efficient at the initial date are also renegotiation-proof. In an economy with a sequence of markets, competitive equilibria are Pareto efficient in this sense, and for generic endowments, only if preferences are locally homothetic.     

Merger remedies involving restructuring costs in a Cournot framework

We analyze the effects of structural merger remedies in a Cournot framework. In particular, we extend a basic model approach by introducing restructuring investments that are necessary to implement divestiture remedies. We assume that such investments increase the merging parties’ marginal cost of production and show that they therefore reinforce the effect of divestitures on post-merger competition. As a consequence, if the competition authority does not take restructuring investments into account while fixing the remedies, the size of the divestiture will be too large and hence over-fix the competition issue. This not only causes an unduly increase of the market power of the competitor but also reduces the synergy gains of the merging parties and therefore hurts consumers in the affected markets.     

Does entry improve welfare? A general equilibrium approach to competition policy

We consider a simple general equilibrium model with imperfect competition. Firms are price takers in the input market and compete à la Cournot in some or all of the product markets and their technologies display constant returns to scale. We show that an increase in the number of firms in a given sector does not always improve welfare. We also provide a characterization in terms of mark-up rates of the sectors for which entry is welfare enhancing. Our results challenge the common idea that mergers with no cost synergy are not desirable for consumers.     

Monopolistic competition and income dispersion

We develop a model of monopolistic competition that accounts for consumers’ heterogeneity in both incomes and preferences. This model makes it possible to study the implications of income redistribution on the toughness of competition. We show how the market outcome depends on the joint distribution of consumers’ tastes and incomes and obtain a closed-form solution for a symmetric equilibrium. Competition toughness is measured by the weighted average elasticity of substitution. Income redistribution generically affects the market outcome, even when incomes are redistributed across consumers with different tastes in a way such that the overall income distribution remains the same.     

BERTRAND COMPETITION CAN YIELD HIGHER PRICES THAN MONOPOLY

If we take into account the spatial dimension of markets, prices of incumbent firms may be higher and consumer surplus may be lower with competition than with monopoly. This result obtains unambiguously, even in the supposedly highly competitive case of Bertrand competition. Moreover, we are able to show that consumers of the commodity may be worse off with duopoly, if the distance between the firms' sites is sufficiently large.     

Graded eco-labels: A demand-oriented approach to reduce pollution

Supplied oriented environmental policies are generally used in order to limit production related pollution. This fact is based on the hypothesis that consumers are not willing to sacrifice personal utility for a wider social gain. We suggest that widespread environmental concerns of consumers can be exploited to push producers along cleaner technological patterns. Our core assumption is that consumers would be ready to purchase cleaner products if the products' characteristics are not ‘too dissimilar’ to those of more polluting alternatives. However, due to a lack of information about non-observable product characteristics, this assumption on its own is not sufficient for ‘environmental friendly’ producers to become competitive. We show - by means of a simulation model - that only if consumers are provided with appropriate information on the greenness of products through adequate eco-labels (graded eco-labels), then producers will be pressed to implement innovations aimed at reducing the environmental impact of their products. Under two test settings - one without any certification and another with binary eco-labels - the model shows markets characterised by highly polluting technological patterns. Only in the presence of graded eco-labels, competition drives the market toward cleaner technological patterns.     

Undesirable competition

We show that the entry of private profit-maximising firms makes the consumers worse off compared to having a nationalised monopoly. Such entry increases the nationalised firm’s profit, industry profit, and social welfare, at the expense of the consumers. Our result is important for competition policy.     

Can a decline in search cost increase prices?

This paper provides a new explanation of why a decline in consumers’ price search cost may not lead to lower prices. In a duopoly with price competition, I show that when some consumers are captive to one firm, there may be a non‐monotonic relationship between search cost and market power; firms may charge high prices with higher probability and the average price charged may be higher when consumers’ price search cost falls below a critical level. Furthermore, when firms have asymmetric captive segments, expected prices charged by each firm may move in opposite directions as search cost declines.     

INCOME DISPERSION AND PRICE DISCRIMINATION

Abstract.  This paper analyses the effects of inter-market and intra-market income heterogeneities on output and social welfare under uniform pricing and differential pricing regimes by considering a finite number of markets. We first derive the linear demand curve in each market under plausible conditions, and then show that more markets (and consumers) are excluded under uniform pricing the higher are the inter-market income differences. We also show that adding markets, even of lower income levels than those of existing markets, helps to decrease prices and thus cause more markets to be served. Implications of intra-market income dispersion are also explored.     

Paradoxical price effects on insurance markets

In this paper we analyze a paradox phenomenon in certain insurance markets of some countries: in spite of there being strong competition, increasing prices can be found in some submarkets. As a reason for this, we need to note the special distribution of insurance products, a distribution primarily based on intermediaries — and, as a result, there is an increasing part for ‘intermediation’ costs within insurance products' cost structure due to competition for the intermediaries. We build an oligopolistic model assuming that the market is saturated, which is able to explain the overemployment of intermediaries and the high commissions involved. We analyze possible interventions and laws/regulations and suggest that the problem can be solved only with major regulation. Finally, we have come up with an empirical analysis to test the model.     

Strong contagion with weak spillovers

In this paper, we develop an explanation for why events in one market may trigger similar events in other markets, even though at first sight the markets appear to be only weakly related. We allow for escape dynamics in each market, and show that an escape in one market is contagious because it more than doubles the probability of a similar escape in another market. We claim that contagion is strong since escapes become highly synchronised across markets. Spillovers are weak because the instantaneous spillover of events from one market to another is small. To illustrate our result, we demonstrate how a currency crisis may be contagious with only weak links between countries. Other examples where weak spillovers would create strong contagion are various models of monetary policy, imperfect competition and endogenous growth.     

PRODUCT LINE RIVALRY

We analyse how product line rivalry by multi‐product oligopolists is affected by market size and product substitutability. We show that the width and degree of overlap in competing product lines is determined by the tension between two effects: the drive to ‘be where the demand is’ and the desire to weaken competition and intra‐firm product cannibalization. Product lines are shown to be wider and more overlapped in large markets and when product substitutability is weak. Our analysis suggests that firms can increase their profits by agreeing not to overlap their product lines.     

Price,Programming and Potential Competition in US Cable Television Markets

Potential competition in the US cable television industry is empirically examined for 385 markets. Predicted entry probabilities are included in a supply-demand model to permit empirical investigation of the effect of potential competition on incumbent cable operators price and channel programming decisions. Estimation results show incumbents offer more channels to consumers in markets facing greater potential competition from broadband service provider (BSP) wireline overbuilders and/or incumbent local exchange carriers. In particular, when the probability of entry rises to about 42 the average cable system provides six more channels, and price per channel declines from US$ 0.77 to US$ 0.66.JEL Classification: L8, L9, L11We thank Ben Compaine, Shane Greenstein, Anne Hoag, Donald Waldman, Bradley Wimmer, the editor of this journal, an anonymous referee, and participants at the 30th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC 2002), September 28–30, 2002, Hilton Hotel, Alexandria, Virginia, for comments. Armando Galarraga and Nana Puangpathumanond provided research assistance, and Jane Frenette and Jonathan Levy provided excellent help with FCC cable entry and competition data. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Rent‐Seeking,Market Structure,and Growth

We study the role of productive and unproductive entrepreneurship in economic growth, in a setting where firms compete in both economic and political markets. Specifically, firms compete for market share through cost‐reducing technological innovation, and they vie for influence over government transfer policy through rent‐seeking activities. We find that rent‐seeking affects growth in two ways: it allows firms to ignore economic competition, leading to less innovation, and it alters the number of firms that are supported in equilibrium. The former effect is negative, while the latter is ambiguous. We show how these effects depend on various characteristics of economic and political markets.