Entry Deterrence, Product Quality: Price and Advertising as Signals

I analyze the marketing strategy of an incumbent monopolist facing a threat of entry. Product quality is unknown to consumers, and the monopolist's cost is unknown to the potential entrant. The incumbent uses both price and advertising to signal cost and quality. The monopolist faces a dilemma because signaling a high quality attracts customers but requires a high price, whereas signaling low cost prevents entry but requires a low price. I characterize the unique (stable) separating equilibrium and show that dissipative advertising may be used, while it is never used if either quality or cost is known. Some equilibria may involve pooling on cost. A welfare analysis indicates that potential entry may improve welfare and that the effect of unknown quality is not always negative when it interferes with entry deterrence.     

Random Advertising and Monopolistic Price Dispersion

We investigate the role of price advertising in a market where consumers are imperfectly informed about prices. We consider a monopolist whose demand depends on price and advertising expenditure. This demand function is derived from optimizing behavior of consumers. Uninformed consumers may pay a cost to visit the seller and obtain price information. Advertising enables the monopolist to increase the number of informed consumers. In equilibrium the uninformed consumers form rational price expectations, and the seller necessarily adopts a random pricing and advertising strategy.     

Programming and Advertising Competition in the Broadcasting Industry

We analyze competition between two private television channels that derive their profits from advertising receipts. These profits are shown to be proportional to total population advertising attendance. The channels play a sequential game in which they first select their profiles (program mixes) and then their advertising ratios . We show that these ratios play the same role as prices in usual horizontal differentiation models. We prove that whenever ads' interruptions are costly for viewers the program mixes of the channels never converge but that the niche strategies are less effective and that the channel "profiles" are closer as advertising aversion becomes stronger.     

研发投入、广告支出与企业竞争力——来自中国制造业上市公司的证据

研发推动企业创新,广告提升企业品牌声誉,两者都是企业重要的战略决策。本文以2012-2016我国沪深两市A股制造业企业为例,构建研发投入、广告支出与企业竞争力的理论模型,以产品市场竞争为调节变量,采用相关分析和回归分析进行研究。研究发现:企业的研发投入和广告支出均显著提高企业竞争力,且研发投入的促进作用更强;研发增加的专业性资本通过广告转化为市场竞争力,表明研发和广告对提高企业竞争力存在明显的优势互补效应;进一步发现在产品市场竞争程度高的地区,研发和广告的协同作用更强。本文的研究对政府制定相关政策和企业投资策略选择有一定的参考价值。     

股价内生增长、价格信号与管理者激励

股票价格变化可以分成两部分，内在价值决定的长期增长趋势及供求等因素影响的短期波动。本文认为，股票价格的长期增长趋势主要取决于经济增长，即股票收益率与股市扩容速度的乘积等于经济增长率，但在短期内，股价波动主要取决于投资者的预期，供求及信息的作用，认识到股价波动是由于投资者对企业未来盈利预期变化所导致的结果，分析得出了投资者的预期，供求与信息影响股价变化的传导机制，同时利用股价波动所反映的价格信号来设计管理者的经营激励机制，以求实现股东价值最大化和减小股市波动。     

从价格竞争到价格联盟:旅行社业存在的一个博弈均衡解

目前，由于我国旅行社业存在产品模仿行为，使我国旅行社提供给旅游市场的旅游产品趋同，从而导致了旅行社之间为争夺客源市场的价格竞争。为了规避价格竞争给双方带来的经济损失，旅行社之间达成了维护各自利益的价格联盟。本文从产业组织理论的角度，并使用博弈论的方法，探讨了旅行社业发生价格竞争的原因和价格联盟终遭解体的原因。最后，本文给出避免价格竞争的有效方法是实施旅行社产品的差异化战略。     

Price and Money-Back Guarantees as Signals of Product Quality

Why is it so common for the seller to provide guarantees that say “Satisfaction guaranteed or your money back” along with the sale of a product? Newly introduced goods and mail-ordered products are usually sold with such guarantees. In honoring money-back guarantees, why is it a common business practice to pay back exactly the purchase price rather than a portion of it? In this paper we study the informational role and optimality of the common business practice of money-back guarantees in a signaling model with quality uncertainty and risk-neutral buyers. We find that money-back guarantees and price together completely reveal a monopoly firm's private information about product quality, Moreover, the private information is revealed at no signaling cost. Furthermore, we show that in terms of the level of monetary compensation specified by a guarantee, price is the profit-maximizing level of monetary payback in case of product failure.     

Consumer Stockpiling and Price Competition in Differentiated Markets

In many storable-goods markets, firms are often aware that consumers may strategically adjust purchase timing in response to expected price dynamics. For example, in periods when prices are low, consumers stockpile for future consumption. This paper investigates the dynamic impact of consumer stockpiling on competing firms' strategic pricing decisions in differentiated markets. The necessity of equilibrium consumer storage for storable products is re-examined. It is shown that preference heterogeneity generates differential consumer stockpiling propensity, thereby intensifying future price competition. As a result, consumer storage may not necessarily arise as an equilibrium outcome. Economic forces are also investigated that may mitigate the competition-intensifying effect of consumer inventories and that, hence, may lead to equilibrium consumer storage.     

商业零售企业价格竞争与政府管制

价格竞争是商业零售企业的主要竞争手段,本文讨论了商业零售企业价格竞争的合理范围,并结合厂商的定价策略,提出了不同的管制思路,即在保证市场可竞争的基础上,发挥行业协会的价格自治功能。     

Price and Nonprice Competition with Endogenous Market Structure

This paper examines the effect of the intensity of short-run price competition and other exogenous variables that affect gross profit margins—such as the degree of product differentiation and the consumers' responsiveness to quality—on market structure and on advertising and R&D expenditure. A key result is that more intense short-run competition can lead to lower concentration in industries with high advertising or R&D intensity, unlike exogenous-sunk-cost industries. Also, price competition has a negative effect on advertising or R&D expenditure. A case study is also presented, which is consistent with the theoretical results of the paper.     

Unbeatable Value Low‐Price Guarantee: Collusive Mechanism or Advertising Strategy?

This paper investigates the effects of a low-price guarantee (price-beating guarantee) on the patterns of price setting of three supermarkets using micro-level price data. Following recent theoretical developments, the paper analyzes the ability of low-price guarantees to sustain anticompetitive prices. My empirical analysis suggests instead that this low-price guarantee may serve as an advertising device to signal low prices. The supermarket offering the low-price guarantee, aware of its price advantage in a subset of products, uses it to signal low prices to induce consumers to switch supermarkets.     

Price and Quantity Competition in a Differentiated Duopoly with Upstream Suppliers

This paper analyzes the noncooperative game on the choice of strategic variable to set in duopoly in the presence of an upstream market for the input. For the case of labor input, the analysis shows that if the wage is the result of decentralized firm-union bargain, a duopoly producing substitutes may choose to compete either in the quantity space or in the price space, depending upon the distribution of bargaining power in the wage negotiation and the union's relative preference over the wage. For the case of input suppliers as profit-maximizing firms, the paper shows that a vertically differentiated duopoly may prefer to compete either in the quantity space or in a mixed strategy setting where the high-quality firm plays price and the low-quality firm plays quantity, depending upon the extent of substitutability, the degree of vertical product differentiation and the distribution of bargaining power in the input price negotiation.     

Demand for Customized Products, Production Flexibility, and Price Competition

We examine markets where, in addition to production of standard (core) products, mass customization is technologically feasible. We compare a setting where a monopolist provides both standard and custom goods to a setting where an entrant joins the custom market and find customers' tastes affect the social desirability of entry. The entrant is unconcerned about the impact of its custom production on the incumbent's core product market and in some cases may supply more custom products than is socially desirable. Entry enhances (reduces) social welfare if consumers' core valuations are positively (negatively) related to their value added for customization.     

非对称医院双寡头竞争与医疗市场分割--关于我国医疗市场竞争的一个简单分析框架

本文依据我国目前医疗市场竞争状况，通过构建一个非对称双寡头价格竞争博弈模型，分析了不同等级医院在寡头竞争过程中的均衡策略。由于患者在医疗服务质量偏好方面存在纵向差异，价格竞争博弈均衡导致医院间基于患者偏好类型的市场分割，从而形成一次优帕累托均衡，且这一均衡分割结果使得我国目前医疗体系结构同医疗的普遍服务的矛盾日益凸显。     

Search Quality and Revenue Cannibalization by Competing Search Engines

Consumers are attracted by high‐quality search results. Search engines, though, essentially compete against themselves because consumers are induced to substitute away from advertisement links when their organic counterparts are of high quality. I characterize the effect of such revenue cannibalization upon equilibrium quality when search engines compete for clicks. Cannibalization provides an incentive for quality degradation, engendering low‐quality equilibria—even when provision is costless. When consumers exhibit loyalty there is a ceiling above which result quality cannot rise, regardless of what the maximum feasible quality happens to be. Seemingly procompetitive developments may exert downward pressure on equilibrium quality.     

Identification and Estimation of Online Price Competition With an Unknown Number of Firms

This paper considers identification and estimation of a general model for online price competition. We show that when the number of competing firms is unknown the underlying parameters of the model can still be identified and estimated employing recently developed results on measurement errors. We illustrate our methodology using UK data for personal digital assistants and employ the estimates to simulate competitive effects. Our results reveal that heightened competition has differential effects on the prices paid by different consumer segments. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Competing mechanism games of moral hazard: communication and robustness

We consider multiple-principal multiple-agent models of moral hazard: principals compete through mechanisms in the presence of agents who take unobservable actions. In this context, we provide a rationale for restricting principals to make use of simple mechanisms, which correspond to direct mechanisms in the standard framework of Myerson (J Math Econ 10:67–81, 1982). Our results complement those of Han (J Econ Theory 137(1):610–626, 2007) who analyzes a complete information setting where agents’ actions are fully contractible.     

论我国中小物流企业避免恶性价格竞争的途径——选择合理的定价方法及定价技巧

中小物流企业在激烈的市场竞争中举步维艰,为了避免恶性价格竞争,它们必须采用科学、合理的定价方法和定价技巧制定出既能弥补成本、实现利润,又能够令客户满意,还不至于引起竞争对手的不满,从而招致报复的物流服务价格。要达到这一定价目标,需要将成本导向、需求导向和竞争导向定价法配合起来制定出与客户见面的物流服务价格,然后运用零头、折扣和服务组合定价技巧对价格进行修订,形成实际成交价格。     

Bus Competition in Ireland: Delayed by Regulatory Roadblocks

Competition in local bus services in Ireland has been prohibited for more than 80 years, with the majority of services operated by state‐owned monopolies. The Public Transport Regulation Act 2009 seemed to herald a radical departure. It established a new transport regulator and provided that, after an initial five‐year period, routes would be opened up to competitive tendering unless an extension of the incumbents' monopoly rights was necessary to guarantee continuity of services. Yet in December 2013 the regulator decided to extend the state bus companies' monopolies on the vast majority of their routes until the end of 2019. This paper argues that there is no economic evidence to support this decision, which is reminiscent of the previous policy approach of protecting the state companies and raises concerns of possible regulatory capture. The paper calls for the phased introduction of competitive tendering of all routes currently operated by the state bus companies as quickly as possible.     

金融业：监管与竞争并存

[主持人语]稳定的金融是保证一个国家经济正常发展的必要条件之一,没有哪一个国家能在金融动荡的情况下仍然保持经济的发展与增长,东南亚金融危机就是一个例证.但寻求金融稳定并不意味着放弃和限制竞争,市场经济条件下的竞争是和发展、效率挂钩的,没有竞争的金融市场将是一潭死水.因此,如何使金融业的风险最小、效率最高,日益成为各国金融监管部门的重要任务之一,也是判别监管是否有效的重要标准.