Price discrimination and price dispersion in a duopoly

This paper analyses the problem of price discrimination in a market where consumers have heterogeneous preferences both over a horizontal parameter (brand) and a vertical one (quality). Discriminatory contracts are characterized for different market structures. It is shown that price dispersion, i.e. the observed range of prices for each class of customers, increases almost everywhere as competition is introduced in the market.     

Heterogeneous beliefs, price dispersion, and welfare-improving price controls

Summary. We consider a search market model where agents have heterogeneous beliefs about the distribution of prices. A suggestive example shows that Jevon's Law of One Price and standard welfare results are not robust to small heterogeneous errors in beliefs. In particular we show that a price ceiling above marginal cost can reduce price dispersion and improve welfare (by lowering aggregate search costs) without decreasing quantity supplied. These results are broadly consistent with the empirical evidence. Received: July 27, 1999; revised version: May 24, 2000     

Geographic price dispersion in retail markets: Evidence from micro-data

Using an extensive micro-price data of 266 retail goods and services across US, EU and OECD cities between 1990 and 2005, we study characteristics of geographic dispersion of deviations from the Law of One Price. We find that the magnitude of price dispersion is a function of the characteristics of both the type of good and set of locations under examination. Higher share of non-traded inputs and lower tradability of goods are both found to contribute to geographic price dispersion, with the former typically dominating in explanatory power. The role of tradability of good in accounting for the price dispersion is more significant as we move beyond an economic geography, while non-traded input level matters relatively more if we move to the interior of this geography. Our evidence suggests that the models of real exchange rates should incorporate the classical distinction between traded inputs and local inputs as well as a role for relative markups and traditional trade costs.     

On the Granger causality between median inflation and price dispersion

The Granger-causal relationship between the size and dispersion of fluctuations in sub-components of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI) is examined using both in-sample and out-of-sample tests and data from January 1968 to December 2008. Strong in-sample evidence is found for feedback between median inflation and price dispersion; the evidence for Granger-causation from median inflation to price dispersion remains strong in out-of-sample testing, but is less strong for Granger-causation in the opposite direction. The implications of these results for the variety of price-level determination models in the literature are discussed.     

Hotel electronic marketing and online price dispersion in mainland China

This paper examines the hotel online-booking market in China. Information on prices along with three attributes, room type, location, and star rank, have been collected from nine representative online-booking websites. The empirical results show significant relationships between price dispersion and the room attributes. Key findings include: the higher the hotel rank and room type, the larger the price dispersion; the three cities exhibit different price dispersion patterns, and the higher the quality of the room, the larger the price dispersion is affected by location.     

Money,price dispersion and welfare

Summary. We introduce heterogeneous preferences into a tractable model of monetary search to generate price dispersion, and then examine the effects of money growth on price dispersion and welfare. With buyers search intensity fixed, we find that money growth increases the range of (real) prices and lowers welfare as agents shift more of their consumption to less desirable goods. When buyers search intensity is endogenous, multiple equilibria are possible. In the equilibrium with the highest welfare level, money growth reduces welfare and increases the range of prices, while having ambiguous effects on search intensity. However, there can be a welfare-inferior equilibrium in which an increase in money growth increases search intensity, increases welfare, and reduces the range of prices.Received: 25 July 2003, Revised: 12 December 2003JEL Classification Numbers: E31, D60.B. Peterson, S. Shi: We thank Gabriele Camera, Aleksander Berentsen and an anonymous referee for useful suggestions. We have also received valuable comments from the participants of the workshop at Michigan State, the Purdue Conference on Monetary Theory (2003) and the Midwest Macro Meeting (Chicago, 2003). Shi gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Bank of Canada Fellowship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The opinion expressed here is the authors own and does not reflect the view of the Bank of Canada.Correspondence to: S. Shi     

Collusive outcomes in price competition

In this paper we provide a sufficient condition for collusive outcomes in a single-shot game of simultaneous price choice in a homogeneous product market with symmetric firms and strictly convex costs. We also prove the counterintuitive result: if the second derivative of the cost function is nonincreasing in output, it is easier to sustain collusion when the number of firms increases.     

Price Competition Between Teams

This study uses an experimental approach to examine whether markets are sensitive to the internal incentive structure of the competitors. Toward this goal, we modeled the competitors in a price competition duopoly game as three-player teams. Each player simultaneously declares a bid (price) and the team whose total bid was lower won the competition and was paid accordingly. The losing team was paid nothing, and in case of a tie, each team was paid half its price. This duopoly game was studied under two conditions; a cooperative treatment in which the team's profit was divided equally amongst its members and a non-cooperative one in which each individual member was paid her own bid. Whereas the Nash equilibrium is for each player in either treatment to demand the minimal price possible, we predicted that convergence to the competitive price would be much faster in the cooperative treatment than in the non-cooperative one. The experimental results firmly confirmed this prediction.     

Commitment and price competition in a dynamic differentiated-product duopoly

This paper characterizes linear Markov-perfect equilibrium in a duopolistic environment where firms engage in dynamic price competition. Firms have constant (but potentially different) marginal costs and produce differentiated products. We show that, for the case of linear demand, dynamically stable Markov-perfect equilibrium prices are strictly higher than one-shot Nash equilibrium prices, but lower than fully collusive (monopoly) prices. We provide closed-form solutions for the Markov-perfect equilibrium prices which, in principle, can be estimated given data on firm demand and costs. Our results suggest that static two-stage models of price commitment are on reasonably solid ground in that they might be viewed as a reduced form for more complicated dynamic models.     

Imperfectly competitive factor markets and price normalization

A two-sector general equilibrium model with imperfectly competitive labor markets is set up. Noncooperative equilibria with wage setting at the sectoral level are shown to depend on the choice of price-normalization rule even though all agents behave fully rationally. Hence, imposing rationality is not sufficient to deprive the choice of price-normalization rule of its importance. It is argued that the importance of the choice of price-normalization rule may follow from the strategic interaction of agents and not from imperfectness of competition per se, and some examples are provided.     

Choice, price competition and complexity in markets for health insurance

The United States and other nations rely on consumer choice and price competition between competing health plans to allocate resources in the health sector. While a great deal of research has examined the efficiency consequences of adverse selection in health insurance markets, less attention has been devoted to other aspects of consumer choice. The nation of Switzerland offers a unique opportunity to study price competition in health insurance markets. Switzerland regulates health insurance markets with the aim of minimizing adverse selection and encouraging strong price competition. We examine consumer responses to price differences in local markets and the degree of price variation in local markets. Using both survey data and observations on local markets we obtain evidence suggesting that as the number of choices offered to individuals grows, their willingness to switch plans given a set of price dispersion differences declines, which allows large price differences for relatively homogeneous products to persist. We consider explanations for this phenomenon from economics and psychology.     

Rank tests for price convergence in Australian beverage markets

This article examines the price convergence of beverage products within Australia in order to assess the efficacy of intranational cross-border movements of products under the Australia’s Mutual Recognition Agreement. Since the cointegrating relationship between product prices may not be exact or linear, we adopt the rank tests for analysis which do not require prior knowledge and specification of the linear or nonlinear functional form. Our results validate the price convergence of all beverage products within Australia, with the exception of a few regions in the milk market. Furthermore, a subset of the cointegration relationships exhibits nonlinear long-run price co-movements.     

价格竞争还是质量竞争--中国出口产品竞争力的实证研究

中国出口产品普遍被认为“价廉质次”,然而这并不能充分解释中国出口贸易长期增长的实质。对中国2001年加入WTO以来出口产品竞争力的实证研究表明：一方面,中国出口产品的相对单位价格呈现持续下降的趋势,这说明低价竞争是中国出口产品的一个主要特征;另一方面,中国出口产品质量在逐年上升,其中高技术出口产品的质量竞争力较为明显,这说明中国出口产品并未陷入低质量产品的陷阱。在新时期进一步深化对外贸易转型中,把握中国出口产品竞争力特征对我国对外贸易政策制定有重要意义。     

Competition in telecommunication networks with call externalities

This paper describes a model involving two interconnected networks offering different degrees of quality. In these networks, there are call externalities enabling consumers to assess the quality of the calls they send and receive. Networks compete in two-part tariffs. Our aim is to show that the “profit neutrality” result no longer applies due to network asymmetry and call externalities. In the case of non reciprocal access charges, call externalities generate private incentives enabling each competitor to charge low access prices. This reduces the risk of tacit collusion as competitors are free to negotiate their access charges.      

An experimental investigation of soft price caps in uniform price auction markets for wholesale electricity

This paper presents the results from an auction experiment using industry professionals and student participants who compete in a simulated wholesale market for electricity. Motivated by the intervention by FERC in response to the “meltdown” of the California spot market, we investigate the effect of including a “soft” price cap in a uniform price auction as a means of mitigating high prices. When prices are driven above the soft cap, offer curves become flat, in contrast to the hockey stick shape observed in a typical uniform price auction for electricity. This flat offer curve leads to market prices that are relatively insensitive to both generation costs and demand reductions.      

Imperfect competition and capital accumulation: the role of price normalization

We consider a capital-accumulation model with infinitely lived households and two production sectors. The intermediate-good sector is characterized by perfect competition, a constant-returns-to-scale technology, and production externalities. The final-good sector is a monopoly operating under constant returns to scale. We analyze the general equilibrium in the sense of Gabszewicz and Vial [Journal of Economic Theory (1972) 4: 381–400] for this economy and different price-normalization rules. It is shown that the qualitative behavior of the equilibrium paths depends crucially on the chosen normalization rule. In particular, whether equilibria are monotonic or oscillating and whether indeterminacy occurs or not may depend on the choice of the numeraire.     

进入壁垒、生产能力扩张与证券审计市场的竞争

本文从产业组织的视角,利用2001～2005年我国A股审计市场的面板数据,分析了进入壁垒、生产能力扩张这两种竞争因素对我国证券审计市场竞争的影响。结果表明,2000年后证券审计市场政策性进入壁垒提高后,短期内证券审计市场价格竞争有所削弱。但在长期,外生的需求增长导致各事务所生产能力快速扩张,使得市场竞争加剧。从整个研究时期看,进入壁垒提高带来的减缓竞争效应仍大于生产能力扩张带来的竞争效应。     

A price competition game under free entry

This study builds a game of Bertrand-like price competition in a market with free entry. Under the assumption of a standard U-shaped average cost curve, it demonstrates that even if the number of sellers is small, a long-run competitive outcome can be supported as a Nash equilibrium. This game provides unifying treatments to the standard Bertrand equilibrium, the long-run competitive outcome, Demsetz’s equilibrium as well as other types of equilibria that have not been known in the existing literature.This paper is dedicated to Professor Mukul Majumdar to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. I am deeply indebted to Mukul for his generosity and kindness towards me throughout my career. I am also grateful to Tapan Mitra and anonymous referees for their very useful comments and suggestions in the revision and to Fumio Dei, Jim Friedman, Koji Ishibashi, Atsushi Kajii, Takashi Kamihigashi, Kunio Kawamata, Kei-ichi Koda, Takashi Negishi, Michihiro Ohyama, Santanu Roy, and Yoshimasa Shirai for useful conversations and correspondence and, in particular, Motonari Kurasawa, who drew to my attention Demsetz’s work.     

Futures markets,price stabilization and efficient exploitation of exhaustible resources

Markets for natural resource futures contracts and cash forward contracts experience a rapid growth. According to theory, this should result in more efficient resource depletion, implying that price formation is more consistent with Hotelling's rule. The rationale of this stabilization effect is briefly discussed. Next, we analyze the impact of expanding futures markets on the behaviour of individual resource owners trading on the cash market. Using a simple pulse extraction model, we demonstrate that the expected time of depletion can shift to the present or the future, and that utility of exploitation can go up or down, as market prices are stabilized.     

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.