Access pricing and investment: a real options approach

This paper examines a three-period model of an investment decision in a network industry characterized by demand uncertainty, economies of scale and sunk costs. In the absence of regulation we identify the market conditions under which a monopolist decides to invest early as well as the overall welfare generated by this decision. In a regulated environment, we consider a vertically integrated network provider that is required to provide access to downstream competitors and compare two distinct access pricing methodologies: the Efficient Component Pricing Rule (ECPR) and the Option to Delay Pricing Rule (ODPR). We identify the welfare-maximizing access prices using the unregulated market output as a benchmark and show that optimal access regulation depends on market conditions (that is, the nature of demand) with two possible outcomes: (i) access prices that provide a positive payoff to the incumbent, that is, provide a positive compensation to account for the option to delay; and (ii) access prices that yield a zero payoff to the incumbent. Moreover, unlike the earlier literature that argues in favor of an ECPR-type methodology to account for the interaction between irreversibility and demand uncertainty, we find that, except under very specific conditions, an access price that accounts for the option to delay value is welfare-superior to the ECPR.      

An Efficient Avoided Cost Pricing Rule for Resale of Local Exchange Telephone Services

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 requires incumbent local exchange telephone companies to make their retail telecommunications services available to resellers at a discount that reflects the costs that will be avoided by providing the services at wholesale rather than at retail. In this article, we develop a pricing methodology to apply to such wholesale services. The methodology, which we label the Avoided Cost Pricing Rule, is designed to generate an economically efficient discount that may be applied to the incumbent local exchange carriers' services that are offered to resellers.     

Modelling the demand for optional classes of local measured telephone service

There is currently a strong movement under way in the telephone industry to unbundle access charges and usage charges for local telephone service. Pricing schemes with separate access and usage charges are called measured service options. Predicting which option a household will choose involves analysing a selection problem, referred to as the choice of class of service. This choice is estimated in a nested logit framework. The three major findings of this study are that the measured options are perceived as being very similar, many personal calls may originate from businesses if the pricing structure is changed, and that the flat rate price will have to be nearly doubled before the ‘take rate’ for flat rate pricing is significantly diminished.     

垄断竞争的电信业定价策略研究

讨论垄断竞争条件下电信业定价策略,对理解电信运营商的竞争行为、制定电信业竞争政策有重要的意义。本文将呼叫外部性引入模型,考察了呼叫方内部化接听方效用条件下企业定价策略,从而扩展了目前理论内容和结论。研究表明：当呼叫方内部化接听方的效用时,在线性定价条件下,电信运营商仍然会通过提高接入费进行合谋;在非线性定价条件下,由于电信运营商可以利用固定费进行市场份额的争夺,电信运营商不再有利用接入费进行合谋的动机;在基于终接网络的价格歧视条件下,当消费者接听效用接近于呼叫效用时,电信运营商将会通过制定无穷大的呼叫异网价格来获取更大的市场份额,因此网络联接发生了中断。     

Second best pricing of publicly produced inputs: The case of downstream imperfect competition

Efficient second best pricing is examined for a public enterprise facing two distortions: a profit constraint and imperfect competition among some customer industries. We suggest a measure of downstream industry distortion for the purpose of efficient pricing. The pricing rule contains two opposing elements: the shadow value of public profit and this measure of the downstream distortion, whose sum determines whether the efficient second best input price is above or below marginal cost. Efficient pricing normally implies relative subsidization of imperfectly competitive downstream firms.     

Pricing and regulating affect environmental ethics

Effluent charges and tradeable permits are economically efficient but rarely used. A new explanation for this discrepancy is offered. Pricing may crowd out environmental ethics in the pricing, and via spillovers, also in non-pricing sectors. Pricing may therefore increase pollution, providing a reason why decision-makers tend to reject environmental pricing. Five propositions showing the conditions for counterproductive effects are advanced. They are consistent with available empirical evidence. Regulation by setting standards and subsidies damage environmental ethics less than pricing, because pollution is condoned. Damaging environmental ethics may prevent political action in favor of the environment.     

On marginal cost pricing with given tax-subsidy rules

We provide an existence proof for Generalized Marginal Cost Pricing with given tax-subsidy rules. The novelty is that our approach allows for economic environments where all the generalized marginal cost pricing equilibria are inefficient in the aggregate. An example is recalled in order to suggest how non-pathological these environments are.     

GARCH模型下的美式期权模拟定价——来自中国权证市场的经验

分别运用GBM模型和GARCH模型对我国市场上的股票价格进行参数估计,并使用最小二乘蒙特卡罗模拟方法对我国具有百慕大性质的权证进行蒙特卡罗模拟定价,发现GARCH模型的定价效果明显优于GBM假设下的定价,虚值程度越高的权证,定价误差越大。定价误差的对数与上证综合指数的对数之间存在明显的协整关系,权证没有卖空机制,使得套利无法实现,投机气氛较浓,是我国权证的市场价格明显高估的重要原因。实证对GARCH条件下的定价误差更加具有解释力。     

Some evidence in the trading and pricing of equity LEAPS

This paper documents some evidence in the trading and pricing of equity Long-term Equity AnticiPation Securities (LEAPS). The main findings on trading are that LEAPS open interest, trading volume, and put/call ratio are seasonal on a yearly basis possibly due to the impact of the “melding” process that is unique to equity LEAPS. This paper also finds that the Black–Scholes Option Pricing Model, in general, overprices or underprices out-of-the-money (OTM) or in-the-money (ITM) equity LEAPS calls, respectively, and the model tends to overprice when the options are very deep in-the-money (VDITM). Furthermore, the evidence indicates that the deviations of the Black–Scholes prices from the observed option market prices are more pronounced in equity LEAPS than in standard options, suggesting that the Black–Scholes Option Pricing Model is less well suited to the pricing of equity LEAPS than to the pricing of standard options.     

Pricing to Market of German Exporters: Evidence from Panel Data

This paper investigates pricediscrimination of German exporters across differentforeign markets. We examine the degree of pass-throughof exchange rate fluctuations in the pricing of 70export items. The model is estimated using panel dataon export unit values. Parameter estimation relies onGMM first difference, fixed effects, LAD, OLS firstdifference, and the random coefficients model. Themain results for 70 manufactured goods and 15destination countries between 1990–1994 are: Thedegree of pricing to market differs among destinationsand products. Highest pricing to market is observedfor U.S., Japan, Italy and Spain. Pricing to market ismore prevalent in exports of chemicals and fertilisersthan in machinery products.     

MARGINAL COST PRICING FOR UTILITIES: A DIGEST OF THE CALIFORNIA EXPERIENCE

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has adopted the policy of using marginal costs as the basis for the pricing of regulated electric services (the "Marginal Cost Pricing Doctrine"). The record of actions taken by the CPUC to translate the doctrine into pragmatic pricing techniques spans 21 years from 1976, when the policy was adopted, to March 1997. Its pricing edicts for regulated electric rates of the three large California utilities—Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG &E), Southern California Edison Company (SCE or Edison), and San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG &E)—are significant incursions into microeconomic price theory. (JEL D6, B4, N7)     

基于贡献的人力资本定价机制

人力资本定价,不但与其存量价值有关,而且主要以其外在价值为依据,而外在价值的大小受到其载体的努力水平,信息不对称的影响。这就决定了人力资本定价是一个复杂讨价还价的博弈过程,在这种思想下,产生了基于贡献的人力资本定价机制,它为企业收入分配制度和激励制度的设计提供依据,反过来又影响人力资本定价的实现。     

International Competition and the Degree of Monopoly in Australian Manufacturing

Pricing behaviour in open economies is examined by adapting Kalecki's analysis of pricing in closed economies. The parameters of the resulting pricing equation are estimated using data for a sample of Australian manufacturing industries. These estimates are then used to calculate measures reflecting the degree of monopoly for an open economy, which are compared with the ratio of aggregate proceeds to aggregate direct costs as a measure reflecting the degree of monopoly for a closed economy.     

Can consumption-based asset pricing models using monetary conditioning variables explain the cross-section of German stock returns?

In this article, we analyse whether simple Consumption-based Capital Asset Pricing Models (CCAPMs) using monetary conditioning information (growth of the money aggregates M1, M2 and M3) can explain the cross-section of German size, book-to-market and industry portfolio returns. Our results show that models having stochastic discount factor parameters that vary with money aggregates can reduce the pricing errors of models with constant parameters. However, a large proportion of the cross-sectional variation remains unexplained.     

知识交易的定价

就知识经济理论而言,知识交易是不应该被忽略的关键性主题。根据知识供给者面对的市场不同,知识交易的定价分析方法也不同。定价模型揭示了效用不确定性、效用的动态性、信息不对称、非重复交易、交易方式的多样性等对最优定价以及社会福利的影响。知识交易理论是知识经济学的微观基础。     

Environmental activism and dynamics of unit-based pricing systems

It is well-known that unit-based pricing systems have a significant effect on the quantity of collected waste. Part of this effect may, however, result from a selection bias or environmental activism effect. Based on a pooled cross-section for the Netherlands for 1998–2005 we show that despite the correction for environmental activism the effect of the weight and bag unit-based pricing system on the quantity of waste is sizeable. Moreover, this environmental activism effect is decreasing over time, so that the most environmental friendly municipalities implement unit-based pricing systems at first. In addition, we show that the volume effects of the different unit-based pricing systems are rather stable over time. Although we find some evidence for a learning effect, nearly no evidence is found for an awareness erosion effect. This means at least that the effect of unit-based pricing does not decrease over time, which is reassuring from an environmental point of view. Pricing waste helps.     

The evidence of strategic pricing policies of Turkish textile exports

This paper examines the strategic pricing behaviour (Pricing to Market; PTM) policies of textile exports in the 1990s for a hyperinflation country, Turkey, whose currency has been depreciating continually for the last two decades. The findings show that Turkish textile export categories exhibit evidence of strategic pricing behaviour when the Turkish textiles export data is analysed for different frequencies. The results show that evidence of strategic pricing behaviour is observed in response to changes in real exchange rates for textile exports for closer lagging periods and strategic pricing behaviour diminishes with further lagging periods. Also, evidence of strategic pricing behaviour is observed in a more recurrent fashion with higher frequency data, three-month periods, than with relatively lower frequency data, six-month and 12-month periods. Another interesting finding is that Turkish textile exporters prefer to increase their prices as a reaction if they had adjusted their prices in an overshooting fashion in response to real exchange changes in the previous period. The most important finding of the paper is that while Turkish textile exporters prefer to adjust their export pricing without fully absorbing the real exchange depreciation and by increasing their relative markups for some textile categories, they prefer to adjust their export prices by lowering their markups in addition to fully absorbing the real exchange depreciation for some other textile categories in order to increase their market share overseas.     

Exchange rate pass-through in New Member States and candidate countries of the EU

This paper studies the degree of exchange rate pass-through to the prices of imports of some New Member States (NMSs) of the European Union plus Turkey, coming from the euro area. I estimate industry-specific rates of pass-through across and within countries using the methodology proposed by Campa and González-Mínguez [Campa, J.M. and González-Mínguez, J.M. (2006). Differences in Exchange Rate Pass-Through in the Euro Area. European Economic Review, 50, 121–145.] which estimates the short- and long-run pass-through elasticities. I did not find evidence either in favour of the hypothesis of Local Currency Pricing (zero pass-through) or the hypothesis of Producer Currency Pricing (complete pass-through) for all the countries except for Slovenia and Cyprus. With reference to the results by industry, the lowest values for exchange rate pass-through are in Manufacturing sectors. However, I did observe a exchange rate pass-through decline through the pricing chain.     

Pricing for Capacity Utilisation with Public Enterprises

Pricing Individual services provided by public busines enterprises so that the use of available capacity is, where possible, maximised during peak as well as slack demand periods will for many enterprises correspond closely to ideal marginal cost pricing. Such a pricing strategy will usually result in excess profits when the level of capacity is deficient and in losses when capacity is excessive. Optimal long-run capacity can thus be sought under this pricing strategy by increasing or reducing capacity over time with a view to achieving normal profits or a target rate of return. In the short run, before capacity can be changed, enterprise profits are driven by the pricing strategy, not by the target rate of return. For enterprises with large lumpy investments it is particularly important for the rate of return objective to be achieved over several years, allowing for reduced returns when new lumpy capacity is first introduced. For enterprises whose services involve significantly increasing congestion costs before full capacity is reached, pricing to achieve something less than full capacity utilisation is required but technological advancement is reducing the relevance of this complication.     

Optimal Pricing and Entry Rules When a Regulated Dominant Firm Faces a Competitive Fringe

In this paper, we study optimal regulation of a dominant firm facing an unregulated competitive fringe. First, assuming the size of the fringe is fixed, we demonstrate that the usual Ramsey Rule for second-best efficient pricing remains applicable in this context. We also examine the suitability of the Laspeyres price cap and show that it retains its desirable properties. This implies that regulators should continue to apply Laspeyres price cap regulation to the dominant firm after competition has materialized. Then, assuming that price and entry control are regulatory instruments, we characterize the efficient pricing and entry rules. We demonstrate that the free entry equilibrium number of firms will be excessive relative to the efficient number of firms, thereby providing a new Excess Entry Theorem. Finally, we suggest a modification of the Laspeyres price cap that can incentivize the regulated dominant firm to support efficient entry into the fringe.