Supply function competition in a mixed electric power market

In this paper, we present a mixed oligopoly model where electric power generators compete in supply functions in a liberalized market. A former monopolist, the state‐owned generator, is assumed to be (partially) privatized. First, we obtain that there is a relationship between privatization and the number of electric power generators concerning the level of consumer surplus and total welfare. Indeed, a fully state‐owned generator is socially optimal, lowering private generators' profits and enhancing consumer surplus; that is, if the degree of privatization decreases, consumer surplus increases compensating the damage imposed on generators' profits. Second, as the number of generators increases, full privatization may provide similar levels of consumer surplus and social welfare than those observed in a mixed oligopoly. Moreover, it is also obtained that price‐cost margins increase as marginal cost increases. Overall, our results suggest that the state‐owned generator should be privatized when entry barriers are low enough, and competitiveness is enhanced. Otherwise, a state‐owned generator may protect consumers, enhancing consumer surplus.     

Deregulating Self-Regulated Shared Atm Networks

The development of shared ATM networks raises important issues of competition, cooperation and standardization. Sharing necessarily involves cooperation among competing ATM owners and card issuing financial institutions. Networks adopt rules that regulate members' pricing decisions also involve issues of standardization and competition. In particular, most networks make ATM owners sell at wholesale by mandating of interchange fees to replace retail market competition among ATM owners. Networks argue that these rules are necessary to present consumers with a standardized product instead of the chaos of the marketplace and to maintain the integrity of the complementary products offered by members. These are, of course, similar to the standardization and compatibility issues raised in other networks contexts. The paper analyzes the need for this system of fixed interchange fees and sets out a proposal to replace the current system with free market price competition by ATM owners.     

Entry and market selection of firms: A laboratory study

We study how markets adjust to the entry of new firms under different conditions. Two incumbents face entry by three other firms. When firms’ costs are equal, entry always leads consumer surplus and profits to their equilibrium levels. When entrants are more efficient than incumbents, entry leads consumer surplus to equilibrium. With cost asymmetries, market behavior is satisfactory from the consumers’ standpoint but does not yield adequate signals to other potential entrants. Simultaneous entry is in the short run more favorable to consumers than sequential entry. A longer incumbency phase favors consumers after entry.     

A political economy perspective on horizontal FDI in a dynamic Cournot-oligopoly with endogenous entry

Entry in a homogeneous Cournot-oligopoly is excessive if and only if there is business-stealing (Amir et al., 2014). The excessive entry prediction has been derived primarily for closed economies and using a welfarist benchmark. We extend this framework and allow for (1) horizontal FDI in a multi-period setting and (2) interest group-based government behaviour. Opening the market to greenfield investments from abroad tends to aggravate the entry distortion. Moreover, market opening may reduce welfare if a more pronounced entry distortion dominates the gain in consumer surplus. Finally, a government, which places sufficiently little weight on the interests of consumers, will object to market opening, even if welfare rises.     

Restrictions on Foreign Investments and the Relocation of Firms

We analyse why the Chinese government sets restrictions on foreign direct investment (FDI). We focus our analysis on the percentage of shares in relocated firms that the government allows to be foreign‐owned. The government's decision on this percentage depends on the entry cost, the number of firms that relocate and the weight of the consumer surplus in the objective function of the government. We show that by its choice of this percentage, the Chinese government may restrict or encourage FDI to its country. We also find that if the government may subsidise the fixed entry cost, it provides a subsidy only when the producer surplus has a greater weight than the consumer surplus in weighted welfare. In that case, the subsidy encourages relocation by both firms and permits the government to allow a lower percentage of shares to be foreign‐owned in relocated firms.     

COMPETITION CAN HARM CONSUMERS*

Duopolists selling differentiated products can generate less consumer surplus than a monopoly selling one of the products. In a Hotelling‐type model where a monopoly supplies more than half of potential consumers, but not all, entry by a rival leads to a duopoly price that is higher than the monopoly price. Consumers in aggregate will be made worse off by such entry when the effect of the price increase outweighs the benefit of extra variety. When consumers have continuous demand functions and firms use two‐part tariffs, duopoly can also result in lower aggregate consumer surplus than monopoly.     

The Broadband Access Market: Competition,Uniform Pricing and Geographical Coverage

In this paper we analyze the market for broadband access. A key feature of this market is that it is considerably more expensive to connect consumers in rural locations than in urban locations. We show that while competition increases welfare compared to monopoly when prices are free to differ across locations, the opposite may be true if there is a requirement of uniform pricing across locations. Furthermore, we show that given uniform pricing, the regulator may increase consumer surplus as well as profit by requiring a higher regional coverage than the market outcome.     

QUALITY-ASSURING PRICE AND BREACH OF EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY

If consumers cannot discern quality prior to purchase, firms may use both court enforcement and the market mechanism to assure quality. But the level of warranty protection that firms choose to offer depends on the efficiency of the market. As the ability of consumers to communicate information concerning quality among themselves (market efficiency) increases, the level of warranty protection that maximizes consumer surplus falls. In highly efficient markets, producers do not offer a warranty. Thus, courts should not imply a warranty if producers do not specify one. In addition, the level of warranty protection depends on the courts' ability to distinguish between producer and consumer moral hazard.     

Third-degree price discrimination,quality choice,and welfare

Employing an endogenous quality choice model, we reconsider the effect on welfare of monopolistic third-degree price discrimination. We prove that price discrimination always enhances welfare, mainly because the quality improvement owing to price discrimination increases consumer surplus. Moreover, we show that third-degree price discrimination benefits all parties, including consumers in the higher priced market if the preference differences between markets are sufficiently large.     

A dynamic approach to PES pricing and finance for interlinked ecosystem services: Watershed conservation and groundwater management

A theory of payment for ecosystem services (PES) pricing consistent with dynamic efficiency and sustainable income requires optimized shadow prices. Since ecosystem services are generally interdependent, this requires joint optimization across multiple resource stocks. We develop such a theory in the context of watershed conservation and groundwater extraction. The optimal program can be implemented with a decentralized system of ecosystem payments to private watershed landowners, financed by efficiency prices of groundwater set by a public utility. The theory is extended to cases where land is publicly owned, conservation instruments exhibit non-convexities on private land, or the size of a conservation project is exogenous. In these cases, conservation investment can be financed from benefit taxation of groundwater consumers. While volumetric conservation surcharges induce inefficient water use, a dynamic lump-sum tax finances investment without distorting incentives. Since the optimal level of conservation is generated as long as payments are correct at the margin, any surplus can be returned to consumers through appropriate block pricing. The present value gain in consumer surplus generated by the conservation-induced reduction in groundwater scarcity serves as a lower bound to the benefits of conservation without explicit measurement of other benefits such as recreation, biodiversity, and cultural values.     

Complementarity of willingness to pay and cost heterogeneity under vertical product differentiation: A welfare analysis

Due to the fact that a consumer’s willingness to pay differs between segments, many unregulated industries are price constrained, although the specific costs of market segments also differ. If the product quality is endogenously chosen, we find that third-degree price discrimination increases welfare if a sufficiently pronounced complementarity between the willingness to pay and variable cost heterogeneity is given. This is due to the fact that the monopolist’s incentive for employing a pronounced price dispersion strategy is directly influenced by the consumers’ willingness to pay for the quality of a product. With endogenous product quality, the paper shows that the standard welfare result of third-degree price discrimination compared to uniform monopoly pricing (e.g. that total welfare and consumer surplus both fall if total output does not rise) can be only reversed given the complementarity is sufficiently pronounced.     

MEASURING SOME EFFECTS OF THE 2011 DEBIT CARD INTERCHANGE FEE REFORM

In October 2011, new rules governing debit card interchange fees became effective in the United States. These rules limit the maximum permissible interchange fee that an issuer can charge merchants for a debit card transaction. Using new data from the Federal Reserve of Boston, Richmond, and San Francisco 2012 Diary of Consumer Payment Choice, this article provides simple calculations that identify the transaction values by consumer expenditure category for which interchange fees became higher and lower under the new rules. (JEL G28)     

Welfare Effects of Foreign Direct Investment: Cost Saving vs. Signaling

We compare the effects of two types of foreign direct investment (FDI) (viz., FDI for trade cost saving and FDI for signaling foreign cost of production) on consumer surplus, profit of the host-country firm and host-country welfare. We show that the effects are dramatically different. If the reason for FDI is to save trade cost, FDI (compared to export) always makes the consumers better off and the host-country producer worse off, while the effect on host-country welfare is ambiguous. However, if the FDI is to signal the foreign cost of production, FDI (compared to export) always makes the host-country producer better off and increases host-country welfare, while it makes the consumers almost always worse off.     

Consumers' Surplus As an Exact and Superlative Cardinal Welfare Indicator

This article shows that the Bennet-Bowley consumer surplus measure is an exact measure of Allais' disposable surplus if the consumer's utility function is of the translation-homothetic generalized quadratic form. The Bennet-Bowley consumer surplus measure, therefore, is a superlative cardinal welfare measure for the entire class of translation homothetic preferences. Because the exactness results in this article apply for cardinal welfare measures, they can be meaningfully aggregated across consumers to make aggregate welfare comparisons.     

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。     

Platform intermediation in a market for differentiated products

We study a two-sided market where a platform attracts firms selling differentiated products and buyers interested in those products. In the subgame perfect equilibrium of the game, the platform fully internalises the network externalities present in the market and firms and consumers all participate in the platform with probability one. The monopolist intermediary extracts all the economic rents generated in the market, except when firms and consumers can trade outside the platform, in which case consumers obtain a rent that corresponds to the utility they would get if they did trade outside the platform. The market allocation is constraint-efficient in the sense that the monopoly platform does not introduce distortions over and above those arising from the market power of the differentiated product sellers. An increase in the number of retailers increases the amount of variety in the platform but at the same time increases competition. As a result, the platform lowers the firm fees and raises the consumer charges. In contrast, an increase in the extent of product differentiation raises the value of the platform for the consumers but weakens competition. In this case, the platform raises both the charge to the consumers and the fee for the firms.     

Price discrimination using linear and nonlinear pricing simultaneously

Price discrimination practiced by using linear and nonlinear pricing simultaneously raises the average price for heterogenous consumers paying linear price but lowers for homogeneous group who pay nonlinear price. Discrimination lowers consumer surplus for both groups but increases total surplus.     

History-based price discrimination and entry in markets with switching costs: A welfare analysis

We analyze history-based price discrimination in an asymmetric industry, where an incumbent, protected by switching costs, faces an entrant who does not have access to information about consumers’ purchase histories. We demonstrate that consumer surplus is higher with uniform pricing than with history-based price discrimination. We find that the entry decision is invariant to whether the incumbent implements history-based pricing or uniform pricing. This implies that the potential abuse of market dominance imposed by history-based price discrimination is exploitation, not exclusion. Finally, we establish that the profit gain to the incumbent from history-based pricing exceeds the associated loss to consumers.     

Competition (sorting effect) may favour a monopolist

When there are interpersonal effects on demand, and consumer selection is not allowed, a monopolist may benefit from the entry of a competitor, which increases the value of its product, by separating consumers into different groups.     

Beyond the need to boast: Cost concealment incentives and exit in Cournot oligopoly

This paper studies the incentives for production cost disclosure in an asymmetric Cournot oligopoly. Whereas the efficient firm (consumers) prefers information sharing (concealment) when the firms choose accommodating strategies in the product market, the firm (consumers) may prefer information concealment (sharing) when it can exclude its competitors from the market. Hence, the rankings of expected profit and consumer surplus can be reversed if exit of the inefficient firms is possible. Although the efficient firm has stronger incentives to share information when it shares strategically, there remain cases in which the firm conceals information in equilibrium to induce exit.