Regulating the Anticommons: Insights from Public‐Expenditure Theory

This article offers a new interpretation of the traditional Cournot complements problem, or anticommons, by using the theory of public goods to gain a perspective on the problem. Specifically, I examine the pricing strategies and regulation of multiple monopolies that produce products which consumers view as perfect complements. I show that collusion by the firms increases total social welfare and that the collusion problem can be reinterpreted as a problem of provision of public goods from the point of view of the firms. I take this insight further and derive the familiar concepts of the Samuelson marginal condition and the ratio equilibrium for the firms. I compare these outcomes to the first best solution and then apply incentive‐compatible mechanisms to strategically implement the Pareto superior ratio‐equilibrium outcome and the optimal marginal‐cost pricing outcome. Finally, I show how this methodology can be applied to the more familiar Cournot model of oligopoly.     

Was Jules Dupuit a Market Socialist: A Retrospective Note on Marginal Cost Pricing

This paper examines the extent to which Dupuit preceded Hotelling in the theory of marginal cost pricing and the relation of marginal cost pricing to the Pigou–Robinson definition of exploitation, Coase’s multipart pricing, and the Kaldor compensation principle. Tsuneki’s partial rehabilitation of Hotelling’s proof of MC pricing is partially endorsed.      

'Successes' and 'Failures' in the Markets for Technology

Market-mediated contracts for technology trade are bound byseveral transaction costs. This paper argues that as these transactioncosts become less severe, markets for technology can help improvethree market failures: (i) R&D duplications; (ii) externalitiesin potentially public R&D outcomes; and (iii) deviationsfrom marginal cost pricing in the downstream product markets.In addition, with larger markets of potential users, the technologysuppliers will have incentives to produce more ‘general’technologies which span a wider number of firms or industries.Markets for technology also produce new failures. In particular,they induce deviation from marginal cost pricing in the saleof the technology, and they generate externalities associatedwith complementary R&D and other investments made by theindependent buyers and suppliers that operate in them. The paperconcludes by discussing policy implications.     

Economic consequences of VIE when consumers are constrained

This paper, using a Bertrand model of duopoly competition, shows that voluntary import expansion (VIE) forced on consumers, instead of on a producer, is also significantly anticompetitive. VIE causes a higher price as well as higher average cost of supply. When firms can use non-linear pricing, VIE forces marginal cost pricing by the disadvantaged firm, so that it loses incentive for cost-reduction.     

Featherbedding—An easy second best problem

Conclusions The difficulties of second best, as propounded by Lipsey and Lancaster and reasserted by Allingham and Archibald, derive from the allegation that associated with second best optima are necessary conditions that require the violation of necessary first best conditions and which cannot be satisfied by known market forms or decentralized management rules. Specifically, it is alleged that for second best no “solutions” analogous to perfect competition and marginal cost pricing exist. In this paper it has been demonstrated that second best difficulties are not quite as universal as Allingham and Archibald suppose. We have seen that featherbedding contracts give rise to genuine second best situations but that the associated problems are easily solved. If a production unit grants a featherbedding contract but otherwise acts as a price taking profit maximizer, in terms of Paretian criteria (assuming no difficulties at the second order level) no policy action is called for unless society is willing to outlaw the featherbedding contract. Otherwise, the appropriate management rule is simply “behave as a price taking profit maximizer” where this behavior is clearly specified in (28) above and analogous to marginal cost pricing in the first best case.     

Relating Product Prices to Long‐Run Marginal Cost: Evidence from Solar Photovoltaic Modules

A basic tenet of microeconomics is that for a competitive industry in equilibrium the market price of a product will be equal to its marginal cost. This paper develops a model framework and a corresponding empirical inference procedure for estimating long‐run marginal cost in industries where production costs decline over time. In the context of the solar photovoltaic (PV) module industry, we rely primarily on firm‐level financial accounting data to estimate the long‐run marginal cost of PV modules for the years 2008–2013. During those years, the industry experienced both unprecedented price declines and significant expansions of manufacturing capacity. We compare the trajectory of average sales prices with the estimated long‐run marginal costs in order to quantify the extent to which actual price declines were attributable to reductions in production costs. The trajectory of estimated product costs is then extrapolated to forecast an equilibrium trend line for future PV module prices.     

边际减排成本与限排影子成本、能源价格关系

文章在梳理边际减排成本及相关研究的基础上,构建决定经济主体边际减排成本的理论模型,分析边际减排成本与排放约束影子成本、能源价格之间的相互关系和内在决定机制,论证边际减排成本与能源价格之间存在负向关系,并基于影子成本对边际减排成本影响因素进行图解分析;然后结合理论模型和国际碳交易均衡价格进行实证检验;最后立足中国提出相关政策建议.     

Third-Degree Price Discrimination: Apology Not Necessary

Applied work in price discrimination often treats demand curves among multiple market segments as algebraically additive. Yet the welfare effects of multi-market (third degree) price discrimination depend on how the demand segments are added. Treating demands as geometrically additive yields the well known result that discrimination absent an increase in production diminishes Marshallian surplus. But if demands are treated as algebraically additive then discrimination increases welfare over uniform pricing. Quantity is identical in the three cases, so the effect is not due to market opening. Nor is the effect due to scale economies since marginal cost is assumed constant. Profit is always greater under discrimination, so the effect is due to distributional changes in consumer surplus. The model is restricted to linear demands and constant marginal cost but can be generalized for future work and policy analysis.     

Strategic Intrafirm Innovation Adoption and Diffusion

A theory of oligopolistic innovation adoption is developed in which intrafirm diffusions occur because the marginal cost of adoption is increasing in the rate of adoption. The equilibrium intrafirm diffusion curve is S-shaped or concave, as are empirically observed ones. This diffusion curve is more likely to be S-shaped the more competitive the industry, the larger the marginal cost of adoption or the pre-innovation unit cost of production, or the smaller the demand. The diffusion is longer, and so the extent of adoption at any date is lower the more competitive the industry, the larger the marginal cost of adoption or the pre-innovation unit cost of production, or the smaller the demand. A surprising result is that an increase in the unit cost reduction from the innovation has an ambiguous effect on diffusion. Obviously, a larger cost reduction allows each firm to earn a larger flow profit at every date from the same rate of adoption. However, a more subtle effect is that it also allows the firm to earn the same flow of profit with a slower rate of adoption, and so lower adoption costs. That is, the firms also have an incentive to spread out the diffusion over a longer period of time to save on adoption costs.     

A Psychological Reexamination of the Bertrand Paradox

The Bertrand paradox describes a situation in which two competing firms reach an outcome where both price at marginal cost. In laboratory experiments, this equilibrium is not generally observed. Existing empirical works on Bertrand competition have found evidence for boundedly rational models. We find that such models are useful in organizing behavior in early stages of the game, but less so in later stages. We show that a new model, coarse grid Nash equilibrium, based on the assumption that subjects discretize the strategy space, explains the data better.     

Platform pricing redux

Platforms such as Airbnb, Amazon, Apple iOS, eBay, Microsoft Windows, and Uber are ubiquitous. The two-sided nature of platform markets, however, requires a reconsideration of the conditions for profit maximization and understanding of how platforms operate. Profit-maximization in two-sided markets is characterized as an intuitive extension of the inverse elasticity pricing rule (Lerner index). This is further expressed in terms of the participants' primitives: users' reservation values and the platform's marginal cost. Differences between one- and two-sided markets are demonstrated and discussed.     

Entry and the accumulation of capital: A two state variable extension to the Ramsey model

In this paper we consider the entry and exit of firms in a dynamic general equilibrium model with capital. At the firm level, there is a fixed cost combined with increasing marginal cost, which gives a standard U‐shaped cost curve with optimal firm size. Entry is determined by a free entry condition such that the cost of entry is equal to the present value of incumbent firms. The cost of entry (exit) depends on the flow of entry (exit). Equilibrium is saddle‐point stable and the stable manifold is two‐dimensional. Transitional dynamics can, under certain circumstances, be non‐monotonic.     

Increasing Returns,the Choice of Technology,and the Gains from Trade

This paper studies the implications of international trade in a general equilibrium model in which the returns to scale are internal and firms choose their production technologies. The production function generated from internal increasing returns and the choice of technology leads to returns to scale similar to those based on external increasing returns. Trade always increases a country's welfare in a two-sector model in which the agricultural sector has constant returns to scale and average cost in the manufacturing sector may decrease without being bounded asymptotically by a given level of marginal cost. Why a small country may lose from trade under external increasing returns is also illustrated.     

上下游企业相似商品的最优反倾销税率模型

作为政府的重要决策,反倾销税率一直被学术界广泛研究。文章基于两国存在上下游企业相似商品贸易的假设,建立了在完全信息静态博弈下的反倾销税率定价优化模型。通过Cournot-Nash均衡以及逆向归纳法,发现了优化的反倾销税率与市场的容量,商品相关性以及国外上下游企业的边际成本这四个因素有关,但与本国上下游企业的边际成本无关。从而得出在成本变动或者市场容量变动的情况下,政府应如何制定反倾销税率来保证本国社会福利最大化。     

Optimal commercial policy with imperfect foreign supply

Conclusion Maximizing social welfare when there is one foreign firm requires the imposition of fixed domestic price, which results in increased imports from the foreign firm until it engages in marginal cost pricing. A license fee captures (replaces) the foreign firm's economic profit (loss). Extension to the case where foreign supply consists of more than one firm differs from the one-firm analysis in that, while optimale policy consists of the setting of both a license fee and price level for the import, this may entail levying a tariff on imports from the foreign firms. The fee or tariff, but not both, may be negative.     

Vehicle currency pricing and its positive welfare consequences under optimal monetary policy

Using a two-country general equilibrium model, this paper analytically derives the possibility of positive welfare consequences of vehicle currency use in invoicing international trades. Such vehicle currency use is prominent in the data. The literature points out welfare loss under optimal monetary policy due to vehicle currency pricing relative to the flexible price equilibrium outcome, modeling only tradable goods. By introducing nontradable goods and their sector-specific productivity shocks, this paper provides a closed-form condition under which one country's welfare is higher under optimal monetary policy if its exports are invoiced with the other country's currency than if invoiced with its own currency, given that the other country's exports are invoiced with the producer's currency. That is, this paper derives a condition under which vehicle currency pricing is preferred by the nonvehicle currency country to producer currency pricing.     

发电企业竞价上网的经济分析及风险控制

随着电力市场化的逐步推进,发电企业在新的竞争环境下生存和发展,是电力市场化改革中应该考虑的问题。文章通过对竞价上网运作模式的分析,从发电企业内部／外部运作进行经济性分析。考虑了发电企业的生产成本与竞价上网的收益所得,做出盈亏平衡分析,并以边际定价法进行企业利润最大化分析,以此来说明发电企业如何在竞价上网中做出有效的经济行为,由此引申出发电企业与电网公司在竞价上网的报价环节中的不确定性,应以博弈的思维做出决策以达到经济效益的优化;考虑了电力市场价格波动因素,发电企业在与大用电企业交易中的价格风险,引进电力期货市场的知识以规避风险,以使企业在竞价上网的运作过程中稳步发展。     

Block Rate Pricing of Water in Indonesia: An Analysis of Welfare Effects

Block rate pricing of piped water in Indonesian cities has a progressive structure: the marginal price paid increases with the volume of demand. This paper estimates household water demand in Salatiga city using the Burtless and Hausman model, and finds that its distribution is not unimodal—that data cluster around kinks. The main estimation results are a price elasticity of approximately–1.2 and an income elasticity of 0.05. These elasticities are mutually dependent. The estimated model is used to investigate the social welfare consequences of a shift to uniform pricing. The principal beneficiaries would be large households, which are not necessarily wealthy. While replacing the complex rate structure by a uniform marginal price would have positive effects on average welfare, the equity consequences would be small. To improve equity, water companies could reduce installation fees, giving low-income households access to water connections, or reinvest profits in network expansion to unserviced areas.     

Public Goods,Tax Policies,and Unemployment in LDCs

We build a general equilibrium model of a small open economy characterized by unemployment and producing two privately traded goods and one nontraded public consumption good. The provision of public good is financed with an income tax or an excise tax on the manufactured good or an import tariff. Within this framework, the paper examines the effects of such policies on the country's unemployment ratio and welfare, and it derives the efficiency rules for public good provision for each policy instrument. It shows, among other things, that the private marginal cost of the public good always overstates its social marginal cost in the case of income taxes and may overstate it in the case of an excise tax on the manufactured good or a tariff even if the taxed good and the public good are substitutes in consumption.     

Intrafirm resource allocation: The economics of transfer pricing and cost allocations in accounting*

Abstract. A theory of intrafirm allocation under information asymmetry based on Myerson's general theory of mechanisms is developed. From the general model, it is shown that every Myerson equilibrium resource allocation mechanism is a “cost plus” type of transfer pricing. Specializing the general model to allow risk-neutral agents, we derive the exact form of the compensation schemes in dominant strategy equilibrium transfer pricing mechanism. The general Myerson agency problem is transformed into a central planner's problem enabling us to bypass the first-order approach to the problem. The closed form solution shows that each of the agents' compensation schemes is composed of a profit-sharing component, a cost refund, taxes, and subsidies, making it a Groves-like scheme. Additional results show that if the principal is asymmetrically informed about one of the agents only, the agent may derive rent from private information under monotonic compensation schemes, and we provide additional conditions under which Hirshleifer's classical marginal cost pricing is in equilibrium. Résumé. Les auteurs élaborent une théorie d'affectation des ressources internes au sein de l'entreprise, en situation d'asymétrie de l'information, à partir de la théorie générale des mécanismes de Myerson. En se fondant sur le modèle général, les auteurs démontrent que chaque mécanisme d'affectation des ressources correspondant à l'équilibre de Myerson tient du prix de cession interne de type « prix coûtant majoré ». En spécialisant le modèle général de façon à permettre l'introduction de mandataires neutres à l'égard du risque, ils dérivent la forme exacte de régimes de rémunération correspondant au mécanisme de détermination du prix de cession en situation d'équilibre de la stratégie dominante. Le problème mandant-mandataire général de Myerson se transforme en problème de planificateur central, ce qui permet de court-circuiter le premier ordre d'analyse du problème. La solution de nature fermée révèle que tout régime de rémunération des mandataires est composé d'un élément de participation aux bénéfices, de remboursement de frais, de taxes et de subventions, ce qui l'apparente à celui de Groves. D'autres résultats indiquent que si le mandant obtient de l'information asymétrique de l'un des mandataires seulement, ce dernier peut tirer, dans le cadre de regimes de remuneration monotoniques, un loyer de l'information privilégiée qu'il communique. Les auteurs ajoutent des conditions supplémentaires selon lesquelles l'établissement du prix selon la méthode classique de Hirshleifer en fonction des coûts marginaux est en équilibre.