Duopolistic Price Competition with Captives

We extend the Bertrand duopolistic competition to include captives. These are consumers that have no choice between the suppliers. Usual population of shoppers are modeled performing a sequential search in order to decide where to buy a homogenous good. These two simple departures from the original setup have sharp consequences. First, we find that duopolistic price competition is not robust to inclusion of captives. The equilibrium results starkly differ and the only possible equilibrium now includes duopolists charging monopolistic prices. Second, addition of sequential search introduces multiplicity of pure strategy Nash equilibria. In this setup, we observe perverse optimal response to competitor's price changes. Notably, we find that the firm might want to reduce the price in response to the competitor's price increase, which is at odds with the usual undercutting principle. Third, we investigate the behavior of equilibrium prices depending on the heterogeneity in consumer risk attitudes. We find that the higher consumer heterogeneity with respect to acceptance of risky gambles leads to higher prices in equilibrium.     

A MODEL OF MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION WITH PERSONAL INCOME DISPERSION

We introduce non‐homothetic preferences in the Dixit–Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition, and enquire about the effects of a change in income dispersion on the firms’ optimal decisions and market equilibrium. Income dispersion, modeled as a mean preserving spread, is shown to affect only the degree of product differentiation under the standard negligibility hypothesis on the firms’ decision making process, while it generates a positive co‐movement of demand and demand elasticity, when this assumption is removed and the price index effect is taken into account.     

PRICE SETTING OF MARKET MAKERS: A FILTERING PROBLEM WITH ENDOGENOUS FILTRATION

This paper studies the price‐setting problem of market makers under risk neutrality and perfect competition in continuous time. The classic approach of Glosten–Milgrom is followed. Bid and ask prices are defined as conditional expectations of a true value of the asset given the market makers' partial information that includes the customers' trading decisions. The true value is modeled as a Markov process that can be observed by the customers with some noise at Poisson times. A mathematically rigorous analysis of the price‐setting problem is carried out, solving a filtering problem with endogenous filtration that depends on the bid and ask price processes quoted by the market maker. The existence and uniqueness of the bid and ask price processes is shown under some conditions.     

Retailers' control of reference price given product category and level of competition

This paper examines the conditions that make reference price manipulation beneficial to retailers. The paper offers a modelling approach that is based on two distinct dimensions: product category, and degree of market competition. The model shows that reference price manipulation in a competitive market is less beneficial to retailers than it is in a monopolistic market. Reference price manipulation of a specific product is most advantageous to retailers when it is a frequently purchased, low-priced product in a monopolistic market. For an infrequently purchased, high-priced product in a competitive market, reference price manipulation is less beneficial. The analysis gives rise to policy implications that could potentially improve consumer welfare.     

Technological convergence,competitiveness, and welfare: A study of international manufacturing industries

In this study, a monopolistic competition model is used to investigate the effects of international technological convergence on factor rewards, output composition, and welfare. Four testable hypotheses on the impact of technological convergence on follower's and leader's competitiveness and welfare are presented. We then use 1993–2001 data from 128 manufacturing industries in 35 countries to test these hypotheses. Results show that followers' relative wages and global value-added shares increase with technological convergence. Followers benefit from convergence's positive income effect. Leader's own technological progress is the key to its welfare improvement, while terms-of-trade effects appear less important.     

THE ROLE AND INTERNALIZATION OF HOMOGENEOUS AND NON‐HOMOGENEOUS DESIGN EFFECTS IN RECYCLING SYSTEMS

This paper considers recycling systems in which producers and a monopolistic recycler are independent agents, while the design of products determined by the producer affects the recycler's productivity. It is found that such design effects could be internalized within the economy, if the monopolistic recycler pays the normative values of the wasted products according to their designs, while the producers formulate design so as to minimize the product's net price. However, if unfortunate, the equilibrium may fall into a local optimum and may not be stable. We also investigate how such property of the equilibrium could be changed if the recycler's productivity is influenced by the diversity in recycle design.     

论证垄断竞争市场利弊

垄断竞争是一种介于完全竞争和完全垄断之间的市场组织形式,在这种市场中,既存在着激烈的竞争,又具有垄断的因素.本文通过分析垄断竞争市场的条件、特征、以及垄断竞争市场上的均衡等方面的分析,得出垄断竞争市场的优点及缺点.从而为企业在垄断竞争市场中寻求优势提供相关的对策和建议.     

Beyond the home market effect: Market size and specialization in a multi-country world

The standard two-country model of international trade with monopolistic competition predicts a more-than-proportional relationship between a country′s share of world production of a good and its share of world demand for that same good, a result known as the ‘home market effect’. We first show that this prediction does not generally carry through to the multi-country case, as production patterns are crucially affected by third country effects. We then derive an alternative prediction that holds whatever the number of countries considered. This new prediction takes into account important features of the real world such as comparative advantage due to cross-country technological differences and lack of factor price equalization.     

中国房地产业发展趋势的基本估计

预计房地产业发展将由垄断竞争进入完全竞争时代,由卖方市场进入买方市场,由杠杆投资阶段进入实力投资阶段,由乐观预期进入冷静思考阶段.     

Vertical Product Differentiation and Advertising

A duopoly model is developed in which firms' strategic variables include brand quality, the number of distinct market segments to enter and price. Informative advertising is used to overcome consumer ignorance about brands. In contrast to many existing models in which firms engage in price competition, the subgame perfect equilibria of the game are not characterised by the production of vertically differentiated products. Further, whilst the firms typically produce identical high quality products, in some circumstances the production of homogeneous low quality brands can be an equilibrium strategy.     

Beyond the home market effect: Market size and specialization in a multi-country world

The standard two-country model of international trade with monopolistic competition predicts a more-than-proportional relationship between a country′s share of world production of a good and its share of world demand for that same good, a result known as the ‘home market effect’. We first show that this prediction does not generally carry through to the multi-country case, as production patterns are crucially affected by third country effects. We then derive an alternative prediction that holds whatever the number of countries considered. This new prediction takes into account important features of the real world such as comparative advantage due to cross-country technological differences and lack of factor price equalization.     

Preferences,Welfare and Desirable Subsidies under Monopolistic Competition

A simple model of monopolistic competition with consumer preferences for diversity reconciles an empirical‐theoretical disconnect of the welfare properties of industrial subsidies. The optimal policy rules indicate that subsidies can be Pareto improving, but subject to society's preference for diversity. More counter‐intuitively, the welfare‐maximizing subsidy is always found to be strictly non‐negative, and the general qualitative nature of the results seem to contradict the optimum taxation literature. The subsidy incidence is also examined and we find that there exists a potential for an over‐shifting of the subsidy.     

Income Distribution and Monopoly: Price and Quantity Patterns with Intra‐ and Inter‐class Income Dispersion

We analyze the direction of the co‐movements of price and output in a monopolistic market when an expansive shock occurs. Price and quantity patterns are shown to depend on the consumers' income distribution. In particular, a low degree of income dispersion is associated with price and quantity reacting in opposite directions to demand shocks.     

Durable Goods Monopoly,Buyer Uncertainty,and Concurrent Selling and Renting

Stylized durable goods monopoly models typically conclude that monopolists prefer to rent their output due to commitment problems associated with sales. However, we commonly observe monopolistic firms in durable goods industries simultaneously selling and renting output. To address this apparent discrepancy a simple two‐period asymmetric information model is constructed where buyers are uncertain of the good's durability and the firm's manufacturing costs. This is a natural asymmetric information specification since the firm typically has more precise knowledge of product durability and production costs than buyers do. The analysis indicates that a monopolist may wish to concurrently sell and rent output when buyers do not have perfect knowledge. If, for example, consumers believe that product durability and manufacturing costs are higher than they truly are, the firm may wish to simultaneously sell and rent output. Thus buyers' expectations about firm costs and product durability are of critical importance in durable goods models, particularly in terms of explaining concurrent rentals and sales.     

EU telecommunications and electricity markets—Heading towards price convergence?

This paper investigates the sources of intra-EU price dispersion in two important network industries, namely telecommunications and electricity. Both sectors experienced substantial regulatory reforms over the past couple of years, resulting in the widespread introduction of competition in traditionally monopolistic markets. The empirical results reported in this paper confirm that the introduction of competition in these sectors resulted in significant downward price effects. Further progress with regulatory reforms in telecommunications and electricity is likely to result in further price falls in these sectors and reduced price level differences across EU Member States. The content of this article is entirely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Central Bank.     

Rewriting History: the Early Sherman Act Monopolization Cases

This paper reviews two early precedent–setting US antitrust decisions and asks a series of counter–factual questions. What if the Standard Oil Company had not been broken into 34 pieces? What if the United States Steel Corporation had been fragmented? It traces the qualitative evolution of the Standard Oil fragments, following the 1911 divestiture decision, and the corresponding history of United States Steel. It then undertakes quantitative analyses of the survivors' market share trends and the comparative productivity growth, average plant sizes, price — cost margins, and net exports for petroleum refining, blast furnaces and steel from 1899 through 1939. At first, the post–divestiture performance did not differ much between the two subject industries. However, by the 1930s, competition intensified in petroleum refining and the decline of the Standard Oil fragments' market shares came to a halt. In the steel industry, however, competition continued to be mild. A lethargic United States Steel held a price um brella over its rivals and steadily lost market share. Steel companies were ill–prepared for rising import competition during the 1960s and 1970s. The paper concludes that the 1911 break–up of Standard Oil had few deleterious short–run consequences and, by shaping a more competitive environment, it had a decidedly positive long–run effect.     

Understanding consumers’ decisions to adopt technology-enabled transformative services

This study extends understanding of consumers' decisions to adopt transformative services delivered via technology. It incorporates competitive effects into the model of goal-directed behavior which, in keeping with the majority of consumer decision making models, neglects to explicitly account for competition. A goal-level operationalization of competition, incorporating both direct and indirect competition, is proposed. A national web-based survey collected data from 431 respondents about their decisions to adopt mental health services delivered via mobile phone. The findings show that the extent to which consumers perceived using these transformative services to be more instrumental to achieving their goals than competition had the greatest impact on their adoption decisions. This finding builds on the limited empirical evidence for the inclusion of competitive effects to more fully explain consumers' decisions to adopt technology-based and other services. It also provides support for a broader operationalization of competition with respect to consumers' personal goals.     

Optimal pricing in social networks considering reference price effect

We study the optimal monopoly pricing strategies in a social network, in which consumers experience a network effect that is dependent on their neighbors' consumptions and a reference price which is the average price received by their neighbors. We establish a two-stage game model for any social network. Utilizing the backward induction, we derive the equilibrium price by maximizing the monopolist's profit. In addition, we apply this model to the two most commonly used network structures: the star network and the bipartite network. We find that both the network effect and the reference price effect play a critical role in deciding pricing strategies in social networks. Moreover, our numerical results demonstrate that whether to implement discriminatory pricing depends critically on the network structure. This work provides monopoly firms a useful guideline for optimal pricing decisions in social network marketing.     

Duopoly Pricing Under ‘Private Knowledge’ of Product Differentiation

This note studies price decisions in a duopoly industry where firms have private information over the degree of product differentiation (product-type). A Bayesian-Nash price solution is derived assuming firms maximize their ??certainty-equivalent?? profit levels. The comparative-statics indicate that increased risk aversion over the rival??s product triggers price competition. Consequently, the results of the study suggest revealing information is a higher reward strategy than concealing information in situations where rivals have asymmetric information over product type. These findings contribute to the industrial economic literature by generalizing the Bertrand equilibrium in an asymmetric information game model.     

The impact of trade on aggregate productivity and welfare with heterogeneous firms and business cycle uncertainty

This paper presents a model with monopolistic competition, productively heterogeneous firms, and business cycle aggregate shocks. With firm-specific productive heterogeneity, weaker firms quit when faced with a negative aggregate shock. Consequently, trade does not always increase firm-level aggregate productivity as negative shocks on the home market can be compensated for by positive shocks elsewhere. Weaker firms, which would otherwise quit in autarky, can continue to operate by exporting. Despite this, trade can still improve welfare for the risk-averse consumer by reducing aggregate price fluctuations.