外生单向溢出效应下纵向差异化产品Cournot和Bertrand竞争均衡的比较研究

研究价格(Bertrand)和数量(Cournot)竞争模式下,单向溢出对企业质量选择、利润的影响。以纵向差异化市场结构为例,建立了基于单向质量溢出的不对称寡头竞争模型,运用赋值计算对模型的均衡解进行了比较分析,结论是:1给定溢出因子和学习效应的合理取值范围,领先和跟随企业的质量与利润在价格竞争下都小于数量竞争;2质量间的单向溢出效应、跟随者的学习努力都会导致领先者初始质量的下降,但在价格竞争时,这种"逆向选择"效应的程度较低;3跟随者的学习激励随着溢出效应的提高而降低,并不受竞争策略变化的影响。这些发现可以解释中国轿车产业竞争模式对合资和自主创新企业关系变化的影响。     

Cournot–Bertrand comparisons under R&D competition: Output versus R&D subsidies

We compare Cournot and Bertrand competitions with R&D investment under output versus R&D subsidy policies. We demonstrate that Cournot firms invest more (less) in R&D and the government grants more (less) subsidies than for Bertrand firms with output (R&D) subsidies. We also find that both competition modes yield the same welfare with output subsidy, while Bertrand yields higher welfare than Cournot with R&D subsidy. Finally, firms' profits and welfare in Cournot are higher under output subsidies, while they can be higher in Bertrand under R&D subsidies if the product substitutability is high and the firm's R&D investment is efficient.     

Strategic corporate social responsibility of high-speed rail in China

This paper investigates the strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) of a high-speed rail (HSR) firm when competing with an airline firm in a differentiated transportation market and the interactions with government environmental policies in the context of a Cournot–Bertrand comparison. We find that a standard CSR chosen by the government is lower under Cournot than that under Bertrand when both the marginal cost of HSR and product substitutability are low enough, while a voluntary CSR chosen by the HSR operator is always higher under Cournot than that under Bertrand. We also find that the voluntary CSR could be higher or lower than the standard CSR, depending on marginal costs, product substitutability, and competition modes. We then show that when the government imposes an environmental tax together with CSR activities, both the strategic CSR and environmental tax are always lower under Cournot than those under Bertrand. Finally, we show that equilibrium traffic volumes, ticket fares, consumer welfare, and social welfare are independent of competition modes with environmental tax.     

Endogenous price leadership and technological differences

This study constructs a two-stage game of price leadership in a duopolistic market for a homogeneous product. In the first period, the two firms determine a price leader; they set a price for the product in the second period. It is demonstrated in the present study that the technologically superior firm tends to become a price leader. This result reveals that price leadership is determined by the interaction of "competitive force", which prevents the price leader from choosing too high a price (like the joint profit maximizing price or the cartel price), and "collusive force", which prevents a price from falling to a Bertrand price.     

Process and product innovation: A differential game approach to product life cycle

We investigate the timing of adoption of product and process innovation using a differential game where firms may invest in both activities. We consider horizontal product innovation that reduces product substitutability, and process innovation that reduces marginal cost. First, we demonstrate that the incentive for cost‐reducing investment is relatively higher than the incentive to increase product differentiation. Second, depending on initial conditions: (i) firms activate both types of investment from the very outset to the steady state; (ii) firms initially invest in only one R&D activity and then reach the steady state either carrying out only this activity or carrying out both; or (iii) firms do not invest at all in either type of innovation. Comparing R&D investments under Cournot and Bertrand behavior shows that quantity competition entails lower R&D incentives than price competition in both directions.     

Endogenous Price Leadership and the Strategic Acquisition of Information

We model a differentiated Bertrand duopoly in which a firm's earlier knowledge of market demand than its competitor results in endogenous price leadership with the information advantaged firm leading. In such a setting with second‐mover advantage, we then study the firms’ incentives to acquire information and analyze an information acquisition game. Both (i) neither firm acquiring information and (ii) one firm acquiring information can arise as subgame perfect equilibrium, but both firms acquiring information is never an equilibrium outcome, even if information is free. Information may have a negative value if it causes a change in the timing of price competition.     

Market Substitution and the Pareto Dominance of Ad Valorem Taxation

Based on product homogeneity and Cournot competition, past literature has uniformly shown that ad valorem taxation welfare dominates unit taxation in noncompetitive markets. This paper allows goods in a market to be heterogeneous and firms to be Bertrand competing. We confirm the short-run findings of others that consumer welfare and overall welfare are always higher under ad valorem taxation. However, ad valorem taxation generates larger profits (hence Pareto dominates) only when market demand is elastic, perhaps explaining the persistence of unit taxation in markets with inelastic demand. The effects on ad valorem Pareto dominance of within- and between-market substitutability, number of firms in the taxed market, and the level of taxation are also investigated. In the long run, an equal-revenue substitution of ad valorem taxation for unit taxation reduces consumer price, which is welfare improving, but also reduces variety when market demand is elastic, which is welfare decreasing. Nonetheless, ad valorem welfare dominance still holds in the long run.     

Endogenous Markups,Intensity of Competition,and Persistence of Business Cycles

In order to study the propagation mechanism of business cycles, in particular to investigate how the intensity of competition affects market structure and output persistence over business cycles, this paper presents a real business-cycle model with imperfect competition and increasing returns to scale. This analysis considers the markups of price over cost to be endogenous. With endogenous markups, two standard forms of oligopolistic competition—Bertrand and Cournot—are considered. Results show that: (1) the propagation mechanism in the sense of output persistence is greater under Cournot; (2) the propagation mechanism is unequivocally greater with imperfect competition, regardless of whether markups are endogenous or not; and (3) under imperfect competition, the propagation mechanism is greater with endogenous markups than with exogenous markups. Overall, these results suggest that more intense competition produces lower persistence in output growth and, thus, a weaker propagation mechanism. In a calibration exercise, these differences were also found to be quantitatively important.     

Effect of a tariff on the environment and welfare: The case of an environmental differentiated duopoly in a Green Market

Employing a model of environmental quality-differentiated products, we analyze the effect of an ad valorem tariff on the unit emission level of the products, the environment and welfare in the Bertrand and the Cournot duopoly cases, respectively. We show that the effect of the tariff policy depends on the mode of market competition and the degree of marginal social valuation of environmental damage.     

Multi‐Market Competition,R&D,and Welfare in Oligopoly

We investigate a multi‐market Cournot model with strategic process research and development (R&D) investments wherein a multi‐market firm meets new competitors that enter one of the markets. We show that entry can enhance the total R&D expenditures of the multi‐market firm. Moreover, the incumbent's profit nonmonotonically changes as the number of entrants increases. Depending on the fixed entry costs and R&D technologies, both insufficient and excess entry can appear. Our results imply that diversification of their products can be a useful strategy for firms.     

Quality and Quantity Competition in a Multiproduct Duopoly

This article proposes a Cournot model of two‐stage competition to examine the patterns of vertical product differentiation in a multiproduct duopoly. Firms simultaneously choose the number of products and their qualities at the first stage and compete in quantities at the second stage. We show that when the fixed setup cost of a product is high enough to result in a monopoly outcome, the monopolist always sells a single product. Moreover, in any equilibrium of a multiproduct duopoly, quality differentiation between them will develop into a nonsegmented pattern because each firm desires to avoid a strong effect of cannibalization. The set of equilibria reveals the properties of quality differentiation between multiproduct firms. In a multiproduct duopoly, the profit from a high‐quality product can be lower than that from a low‐quality product. This finding sharply contrasts with the literature on single‐product firms, which finds the high‐quality advantage.     

Resource Allocation Effects of Price Reactions to Disclosures*

Capital market participants collectively may possess information about the valuation implications of a firm's change in strategy not known by the management of the firm proposing the change. We ask whether a firm's management can exploit the capital market's information in deciding either whether to proceed with a contemplated strategy change or whether to continue with a previously initiated strategy change. In the case of a proposed strategy change, we show that managers can extract the capital market's information by announcing a potential new strategy, and then conditioning the decision to implement the new strategy on the size of the market's price reaction to the announcement. Under this arrangement, we show that a necessary condition to implement all and only positive net present value strategy changes is that managers proceed to implement some strategies that garner negative price reactions upon their announcement. In the case of deciding whether to continue with a previously implemented strategy change, we show that it may be optimal for the firm to predicate its abandonment/continuation decision on the magnitude of the costs it has already incurred. Thus, what looks like “sunk‐cost” behavior may in fact be optimal. Both demonstrations show that, in addition to performing their usual role of anticipating future cash flows generated by a manager's actions, capital market prices can also be used to direct a manager's actions. It follows that, in contrast to the usual depiction of the information flows between capital markets and firms as being one way — from firms to the capital markets — information also flows from capital markets to firms.     

Profitable Mergers in a Cournot Model of Spatial Competition

This paper investigates the profitability and locational effects of mergers when Cournot firms compete in spatially differentiated markets. A two-firm merger is generally profitable because the merged partners can coordinate their location decisions. The merged firm locates its plants outside the market quartiles with distance from the market center being an increasing function of the number of nonmerged firms remaining at the market center. Profitable two-firm mergers reduce competitive pressure, leading to higher prices and reduced consumer surplus. The merger increases total surplus by increased locational efficiency and the increased profits of the merged and nonmerged firms.     

An Equilibrium Selection Theory of Monopolization

We develop a duopoly model in which firms compete for the market (e.g., investing in process innovation or product development) as well as in the market (e.g., setting quantities or prices). Competition for the market generates multiple equilibria that differ in the firms’ investment levels, relative size, and profitability. We show that monopolization that affects competition in the market can act as an equilibrium selection device in competition for the market. In particular, it eliminates equilibria that are undesirable for the monopolizing firm, while not generating new equilibria. This result complicates the task of determining whether a firm's dominance in a given market is the result of fair competition or unlawful monopolization. We discuss a number of implications for antitrust policy and litigation, and illustrate these by means of two well‐known antitrust cases.     

The welfare effects of a european anti-dumping duty and price-undertaking policy

In the framework of its anti-dumping policy, the European Union can use two instruments: an anti-dumping duty and a price-undertaking. The objective of both instruments is to eliminate the price difference, on the European market, between a European product and a similar foreign product which is dumped on the European market. The authors first briefly look at the institutional framework within which the European Union operates, and at the actual use made of the two instruments since 1980. The main purpose of the paper is to show that, from a welfare point of view, an anti-dumping duty is always better than a price-undertaking. This result is very robust: it holds for quasi-linear preferences, under both Bertrand and Cournot competition, and irrespective of the timing of the firms' decisions.     

Export and Strategic Currency Hedging

This paper examines an international Cournot duopoly wherein a home firm and a foreign firm compete in the home market under exchange rate uncertainty. The foreign exporting firm, being risk averse, has incentives to hedge its exchange rate risk exposure. In a two-stage setting, we show that hedging via an unbiased currency futures market acts as a strategic device. In particular, under either constant or decreasing absolute risk aversion, an increase in the hedging volume of the foreign firm promotes its exports and deters the home firm’s output. In contrast to the well-known full-hedging result in a perfectly competitive environment, we find that the foreign firm over-hedges for strategic reasons. Furthermore, the separation result from the hedging literature under perfect competition no longer holds in our duopoly framework, i.e., equilibrium output levels depend on the risk attitude of the foreign firm as well as the probability distribution of the spot exchange rate.     

An experimental investigation of bilateral oligopoly in emissions trading markets

Market power in emissions trading has been extensively investigated because emerging markets for tradable emissions permits, such as the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), can be dominated by relatively few large sellers or buyers. Previous studies on market power in emissions trading have assumed the existence of a subset of competitive players. However, a key feature of emissions trading markets is that emissions permits are often traded by a small number of large sellers and buyers. Using a laboratory experiment, our objective in this paper is to test the performance of an emissions trading market utilizing a double auction in a bilateral oligopoly. Our results suggest that the theoretical bilateral oligopoly models can better describe market outcomes of emissions trading. The effects of the slope of the marginal abatement cost function on market power in laboratory experiments are found to be consistent with those predicted by the theoretical bilateral oligopoly model. How market power is exercised depends on the curvature of the abatement cost function. If the marginal abatement cost function of buyers (sellers) is less steep than that of sellers (buyers), the price of permits is lower (higher) than that under perfect competition. This is because the market power of buyers (sellers) exceeds that of sellers (buyers). The price of permits is close to the perfect competitive price when all traders have the sameslope of the marginal abatement cost function.     

产品负面报道的金融加速器效应实证分析——以三鹿毒奶粉事件溢出效应为例

使用12家乳制品类上市公司2005-2012年的季度动态面板数据,文章对"三鹿毒奶粉事件"这一产品负面报道的"小冲击,大波动"的金融加速器效应进行了检验,结果发现,在研究的样本范围内,存在金融加速器效应;但金融加速器效应的两个不对称特征与理论本身所揭示的相反,即受冲击时期的资产负债表状况对投资支出影响显著但敏感性弱于其他时期;大公司的资产负债表效应更显著且受冲击时这种效应也很显著。这可能源于产品负面报道的溢出效应不仅带来了传染,也带来了竞争,在危机时期,大公司更倾向于采用竞争策略,夺占问题企业的市场份额。     

垂直产品差异、外国企业纵向控制与研发政策

在Spencer和Brander(1983)模型的基础上,本文引入产品纵向控制因素,考虑生产高质量产品的非一体化企业与另一国生产低质量产品的一体化企业进行市场竞争时,政府的最优研发政策。在企业进行Cournot竞争的情形下,若产品质量差异较大(小),非一体化企业所在国政府的最优研发政策为征税(补贴),而在企业进行Bertrand竞争的情形下,非一体化企业所在国政府的最优研发策略则是征税。