Does Auctioning of Entry Licences Induce Collusion? An Experimental Study

We use experiments to examine whether the auctioning of entry rights affects the behaviour of market entrants. Standard economic arguments suggest that the licence fee paid at the auction will not affect pricing since it constitutes a sunk cost. This argument is not uncontested though, and this paper puts it to an experimental test. Our results indicate that an auction of entry licences has a significant positive effect on average prices in oligopoly but not in monopoly. These results are consistent with the conjecture that entry fees induce players to take more risk in pursuit of higher expected profits. In oligopoly, entry fees increase the probability that the market entrants coordinate on a collusive price path. In monopoly, taking more risk does not make sense since average prices are already close to the profit-maximizing price.     

Independent Service Operators in ATM Markets

This paper studies the impact of entry of non‐banks (termed Independent Service Operators, ISOs) into ATM markets. We compare two different regimes by which the ISO may generate income: (1) The ISO receives interchange fees and (2) the ISO charges consumers directly. We find that due to the entry of an ISO, the size of the total ATM network increases independent of the way the ISO is financed. Account fees increase if the ISO receives interchange fees and decrease if the ISO charges consumers directly. Consumers may not benefit from the entry of the ISO. If a regulator can control the interchange fee, entry by an ISO financed through interchange fees increases consumer surplus, while the entry of a surcharging ISO decreases consumer surplus.     

Price Discrimination in Public Healthcare

Could a public healthcare system use price discrimination—paying medical service providers different fees, depending on the service provider's quality—lead to improvements in social welfare? We show that differentiating medical fees by quality increases social welfare relative to uniform pricing (i.e. quality‐invariant fee schedules) whenever hospitals and doctors have private information about their own ability. We also show that by moving from uniform to differentiated medical fees, the public healthcare system can effectively incentivise good doctors and hospitals (i.e. low‐cost‐types) to provide even higher levels of quality than they would under complete information. In the socially optimal quality‐differentiated medical fee system, low‐cost‐type medical‐service providers enjoy a rent due to their informational advantage. Informational rent is socially beneficial because it gives service providers a strong incentive to invest in the extra training required to deliver high‐quality services at low cost, providing yet another efficiency gain from quality‐differentiated medical fees.     

LIABILITY AND ANTIFRAUD INVESTMENT IN FINTECH RETAIL PAYMENT SERVICES

Motivated by recently introduced retail payment schemes using information technology, often called “FinTech,” we examine the effect of fraud liability regime on antifraud investment in a FinTech payment scheme, where the front‐end and back‐end services are vertically separated. In an environment where a FinTech payment service provider (FPP) covers only the front‐end services, delegating the back‐end services to an integrated payment service provider (IPP) such as banks and credit card companies, we show that under the IPP liability regime, the IPP invests more in general, while the respective investment depends on the range of the access fee under the FPP liability regime. Specifically, given a sufficiently great loss from accident, if the access fee is in a certain range, the FPP liability regime is superior in terms of antifraud investment. When the FPP makes its indirect revenue from its user base in addition to the revenue from user fees, we can observe greater antifraud investment under both liability regimes, but the overall decrease in fraud probability is higher under the IPP liability regime. Our results suggest that it might be desirable to induce FPP liability regime, which might necessitate regulating the access fee to achieve such an outcome. (JEL G23, G28, D43, L22)     

Regulatory Barriers and Entry into a New Competitive Industry

We model the effects of license fees and bureaucratic delay on firm entry into a new competitive industry, whose profitability is initially unknown. A license fee alone reduces the number of first movers and the steady‐state number of firms. The combination of license fee and delay may cause some entrepreneurs to purchase licenses speculatively, only using them to enter production later if profitability is revealed to be sufficiently favourable. Alternatively, some entrepreneurs may wait, possibly buying a license only after profitability is revealed; but it is never found that some entrepreneurs adopt one of these strategies and some the other.     

Fees and the Efficiency of Tradable Permit Systems: An Experimental Approach

The paper presents the results of an economic experiment in which the effects of fees on allocative efficiency of tradable utilization permits (e.g. pollution permits) are explored. Laboratory subjects (university students) play the roles of firms whose generic product requires a specific input or permits. Scarcity is exogenously introduced by a fixed supply of tradable production permits. Three treatments are compared: No fee imposed (N); a fixed tax per permit (T); and partial retraction of permits and subsequent redistribution by auction (A). Treatments T and A represent two different ways of imposing fees, which are designed to be revenue equivalent. Our results indicate that, after controlling for deviation of permit prices from a prediction based on fundamentals, fees have an impact on distribution of permits. Interestingly, a fixed tax enhances efficiency compared to the case of no fees while retraction and reallocation by auction tends to reduce efficiency. Apparently, subjects’ decision making is affected by the imposition of fees, but how and to what extent depends on the method used.     

The determination of public tuition fees in a mixed education system: A majority voting model

We study the determination of public tuition fees through majority voting in a vertical differentiation model where agents' returns on educational investment differ and public and private universities coexist and compete in tuition fees. The private university offers higher educational quality than its competitor, incurring higher unit cost per trained student. The tuition fee for the state university is fixed by majority voting while that for the private follows from profit maximization. Then agents choose to train at the public university or the private one or to remain uneducated. The tax per head adjusts in order to balance the state budget. Because there is a private alternative, preferences for education are not single‐peaked and no single‐crossing condition holds. An equilibrium is shown to exist, which is one of three types: high tuition fee (the “ends” are a majority), low tuition fee (the “middle” is a majority), or mixed (votes tie). The cost structure determines which equilibrium obtains. The equilibrium tuition is either greater (majority at the ends) or smaller (majority at the middle) than the optimal one.     

ATM跨行取款收费制的影响:一个基于网络外部性的分析框架

央行为了激励各商业银行增设ATM而批准开征跨行费,我们的研究表明,跨行费制却打击了各商业银行增设ATM的激励。本文以Salop环形城市模型分析了跨行取款不收费制、跨行费制、额外费制下银行在ATM业务上的成本收益情况,本文有意义的结论主要有:当交换费等于ATM的边际成本时,两种费制都会使银行达到利润最大化;在纯粹ATM业务上,跨行费是战略替代的,额外费是战略互补的;在银行竞争上,跨行费是战略互补的,额外费是战略替代的。     

A Theoretical Analysis of Trade Union Membership Fees, Bargaining Power, Wage Rate and Unemployment

The positive effect of membership fees on trade unions' cohesion and commitment and the adverse effect of these fees on trade unions' density imply that the effects of membership fees on trade unions' bargaining power, wage rate and unemployment can be depicted by inverted U-shaped curves whose upper bounds are reached when membership fees are set at half the ratio of the upper-bound on members' level of satisfaction from the trade union services to their disposable income rate. The implications of these effects for membership fees are analysed for a trade union that sets its membership fee so as to minimise the loss stemming from missing wage rate and unemployment targets.     

Effect of Secondary School Fees on Educational Attainment*

In this study, the heterogeneity of the fee abolition process in West German secondary schools is used to identify the effect of school fees on educational attainment and to obtain an estimate of the price elasticity of upper secondary education. The analysis is based on representative individual‐level data from three annual surveys of the German Mikrozensus. While coefficients cannot be estimated precisely, the results suggest that, on average, upper secondary school attainment increased by at least 8 percent in response to the fee abolition. The educational attainment of females appears to be more price sensitive than that of males.     

Access Prices for Rail Infrastructure

Separation of railway infrastructure, a natural monopoly, from a contestable train operator industry raises policy options for setting the infrastructure access fee and for regulation of the infrastructure supplier. Marginal cost, average cost. Ramsey prices and multipart tariff rules for access fees are assessed. Recognizing the importance of train operator entry decisions, a single access fee per gross tonne kilometre based on a mark-up of marginal cost is favoured. An independent regulator and the use of price ceilings on the infrastructure supplier are proposed.     

Contingency Fees, Settlement Delay, and Low-Quality Litigation: Empirical Evidence from Two Datasets

Although flat fees are common for divorces, wills and trusts,and probate, lawyers in personal injury cases generally arepaid by contingency fee or at an hourly rate. Arguments havebeen made that contingency fees increase low-quality, "frivolous"litigation but counterarguments suggest that contingency feesactually limit such litigation and instead it is hourly feesthat increase low-quality litigation. Using a difference indifferences test and data on a cross section of states in 1992,we test whether legal quality is lower under contingency orhourly fees. We also examine medical malpractice claims in Floridausing a time series centered around a law change that limitedcontingency fees. We also examine the impact of fee arrangementson the expected time to settlement. We find that hourly feesencourage the filing of low-quality suits and increase the timeto settlement (i.e., contingency fees increase legal qualityand decrease the time to settlement).     

Competition Between Exclusive Religions: The Counter‐Reformation As Entry Deterrence

This article sets forth a theory of competition between exclusive religions as an entry deterrence game, in which the incumbent may find it profitable not to accommodate but to deter the competitor's entry by precommitting to sufficient capacity expansion in the event of entry. If entry costs are high enough, deterrence is optimal and the incumbent remains a monopolist, although the entry threat distorts its effort upward. The model is then applied to the Catholic Church's reaction to the Protestant Reformation. It is argued that the model provides a better fit to the historical data of the Counter‐Reformation than the price‐cutting model proposed by economists Ekelund, Hébert and Tollison ( 2004 , 2006 ).     

Legal effort and optimal legal expenses insurance

In this paper we derive optimal legal expenses insurance for litigants and payment method for lawyers when neither the litigant's quantity choice nor the lawyer's legal effort is contractible. Three points are highlighted as our conclusions. First, to design an optimal insurance-payment system, demand-side cost-sharing is necessary. Second, supply-side cost-sharing is necessary only if the quantity and effort are substitutes and the payment contract involves hourly fees. Third, the optimal insurance-payment system could be achieved under conditional fees and sliding fees. Reputation incentives and side-contracts are also discussed in this paper.     

Profitable Advice: the Value of Information Provided by Canada's Inventor's Assistance Program

Inventors who are considering whether and how to commercialize their inventions. can often avail themselves to evaluations and advice provided by government supported programs initiated to encourage innovation. In Canada. such a service is provided by the Canadian Innovation Centre. through its Inventor's Assistance Program. In its twenty years of operations the IAP has evaluated 11,000 inventions. The fee charged for an invention evaluation was Cdn. $262 in 1995, and these fees covered about half the program's expenses. We compute the expected value of the information the IAP's evaluation provides under different assumptions and scenarios. Under plausible conditions, the value of the information to the inventor is found to be higher than both the fee and the social cost of the program. The implications of some inventors not following the advice given to them by the IAP are briefly explored.     

Effects of Unit-Based Garbage Pricing: A Differences-in-Differences Approach

Using a unique 10-year dataset of all 458 Dutch municipalities, we apply a differences-in-differences approach to estimate the effect of unit-based pricing on household waste quantities and recycling. Community-level studies of unit-based pricing typically do not include fixed effects at the local level. We find that failure to do so may substantially inflate the estimated price effect. We also find that unit-based pricing may be endogenous, and use instrumental variables to account for this. Our analysis shows that user fees depend on user fees in neighboring jurisdictions (policy interaction). Our estimate of the garbage reduction per $1 user fee is lower than any previous estimate bar one. The price effect depends on the pricing system: weight-based systems reduce garbage quantities more than volume-based systems. User fees increase recycling, especially of paper, but not nearly as much as they reduce garbage quantities. We find no evidence for waste tourism or illegal dumping.     

Taxes,Tuition Fees,and Education for Pleasure

The fact that education provides both a productive and a consumptive (nonproductive) return has important and, in some cases, dramatic implications for optimal taxes and tuition fees. Using a simple model, we show that when the consumption share in education is endogenous and tuition fees are unconstrained, the optimal tax/fee system involves regressive income taxes and high tuition fees. A progressive labor income tax system may, on the other hand, be a second‐best response to politically constrained, low tuition fees. Finally, the existence of individuals with different abilities will also move the optimal income tax system toward progressivity.     

DYNAMIC ENTRY WITH DEMAND AND SUPPLY SIDE SPILLOVERS

Supply side spillovers have been used to explain firms' entry behavior in the pharmaceutical industry. In contrast, demand side spillovers have received less attention. This paper identifies supply and demand spillovers using a dynamic model of strategic interaction. The results indicate that demand side spillovers are more significant than the supply side spillovers to generic drug firms, and the demand side spillovers increase a firm's market share by 3%–4% on average in subsequent market entry. In addition, with supply side spillovers alone, lowering entry barriers can increase future entry rates, while in the case of demand side spillovers, lowering entry barriers will have the opposite effect. (JEL L110, L130, D220)     

Improved Mutual Fund Investment Choice Architecture

Two choice architecture interventions were explored to debias investors' irrational preference for mutual funds with high past returns rather than funds with low fees. A simple choice task was used involving a direct trade-off between maximizing past returns and minimizing fees. In the first intervention, warning investors that “Some people invest based on past performance, but funds with low fees have the highest future results” was more effective than 3 other disclosure statements, including the U.S. financial regulator's, “Past performance does not guarantee future results.” The second intervention involved converting mutual fund annual percentage fees into a 10-year dollar cost equivalent. This intervention also improved investors' fee sensitivity, and remained effective even as past returns increased. Financially literate participants were surprisingly more likely to irrationally maximize past returns in their investment choices.     

FAMILY PLANNING AND WOMEN'S EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT: EVIDENCE FROM THE ONE‐CHILD POLICY

This paper exploits China's one‐child policy (OCP) to study the relationship between fertility and educational attainment of the mothers of China's “sibling‐less generation.” I take two difference‐in‐differences approaches to estimate the OCP's effect on women's education: one compares gender difference among the ethnic majority group and the other compares ethnicity differences between ethnic majority women and ethnic minority women. I also explore the heterogeneity of the policy's effects by parent's status at the Communist Party. I find that the OCP has a positive and significant effect on women's education and explains about half of the increase in educational attainment for women born between 1960 and 1980. Their increased educational attainment associates with delayed entry into first marriage, delayed entry to parenthood and increased labor supply. (JEL I20, J13, J16, J18)