Price discrimination and price dispersion in a duopoly

This paper analyses the problem of price discrimination in a market where consumers have heterogeneous preferences both over a horizontal parameter (brand) and a vertical one (quality). Discriminatory contracts are characterized for different market structures. It is shown that price dispersion, i.e. the observed range of prices for each class of customers, increases almost everywhere as competition is introduced in the market.     

Environmental regulation and firm location choice in China

How may environmental regulation affect firm location choice? While this question has generated great research interest from high-standard, industrial economies, in this article we turn the spotlight to low-standard, developing countries and use China’s Census of Manufactures data during 2003–2008 to explore how firms with different ownership, during different policy regimes as well as from different industries may respond to environmental regulations in different ways. Results show environmental stringency has a positive effect on state-owned enterprises’ location choice during 2003–2005, but the effect becomes insignificant during 2006–2008. Private-owned enterprises, foreign-owned enterprises and collective-owned enterprises are more likely to enter areas with less stringent environmental regulations during 2003–2005. However, this pattern is reversed for the period of 2006–2008. Furthermore, the above relationships are more pronounced for firms in polluting industries.     

The welfare effect of quality degradation in the presence of network externalities

This paper examines how the presence of network externalities affects a monopolist's incentive for quality degradation and its welfare consequence. The software and Internet service industries provide our primary motivation. The network externality may lead to a Pareto-improving quality degradation that would not be realised in the absence of network externalities. However, it may also overturn a potentially Pareto-improving quality degradation to a welfare-reducing one, or result in the realisation of a welfare-reducing quality degradation that would be avoided without network externalities. We also endogenise the firm's forward and backward compatibility decisions between the original and degraded goods.     

Money,price dispersion and welfare

Summary. We introduce heterogeneous preferences into a tractable model of monetary search to generate price dispersion, and then examine the effects of money growth on price dispersion and welfare. With buyers search intensity fixed, we find that money growth increases the range of (real) prices and lowers welfare as agents shift more of their consumption to less desirable goods. When buyers search intensity is endogenous, multiple equilibria are possible. In the equilibrium with the highest welfare level, money growth reduces welfare and increases the range of prices, while having ambiguous effects on search intensity. However, there can be a welfare-inferior equilibrium in which an increase in money growth increases search intensity, increases welfare, and reduces the range of prices.Received: 25 July 2003, Revised: 12 December 2003JEL Classification Numbers: E31, D60.B. Peterson, S. Shi: We thank Gabriele Camera, Aleksander Berentsen and an anonymous referee for useful suggestions. We have also received valuable comments from the participants of the workshop at Michigan State, the Purdue Conference on Monetary Theory (2003) and the Midwest Macro Meeting (Chicago, 2003). Shi gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Bank of Canada Fellowship and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The opinion expressed here is the authors own and does not reflect the view of the Bank of Canada.Correspondence to: S. Shi     

Privatization, productive efficiency and social welfare with a foreign competitor

We investigate how decision-making upon cost-reducing R&D investment by a domestic public firm is affected by privatization and entry of a foreign firm. It is shown that entry of a foreign firm lowers productive efficiency of the domestic public firm but improves the domestic social welfare. It is also shown that privatization of the public firm lowers productive efficiency and deteriorates domestic social welfare.     

Cartel sustainability with vertical product differentiation: Price versus quantity competition

In the context of a vertically differentiated duopoly, we analyse the influence of the degree of differentiation on cartel sustainability, under both price and quantity competition. We find that, under both Bertrand and Cournot competition, the effect of vertical product differentiation on sustainability of the collusive equilibrium is unclear. It is shown that, given a degree of differentiation, price collusion is more sustainable than quantity collusion.     

Parallel trade,product quality,and welfare

We study the welfare effects of parallel trade (PT) considering investment in quality. We thus revisit the case for PT in research-intensive industries. We find that PT may raise quality, depending on how preferences for quality differ across countries. Conditional on quality, consumer surplus may rise (fall) in the PT-source (PT-recipient) country. While PT reduces ex post welfare, improving quality is a necessary condition for PT to increase welfare ex ante.     

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.     

Quality competition,welfare, and regulation

In this paper, we study the supply of quality in imperfectly competitive markets, and explore the role of regulation in markets where firms may use both quality and price to compete for customers. In a model where firms first choose qualities and then prices, we find that quality decisions have strategic effects: firms react to quality disadvantages by price reductions. Because of this strategic effect, firms do not have the correct incentive to set socially efficient quality levels. Price and quality competition results in a socially suboptimal quality level. Efficiency can be restored by lump-sum transfers and price regulatory policies. Simple price regulation may result in lower price and higher quality.We thank Nicholas Economides, Randall Ellis, Thomas McGuire, Michael Riordan, and Monika Schnitzer for discussing various issues in this research with us. We are also grateful to a referee for helpful comments and suggestions. The first author acknowledges support from the Management Science Group, Department of Veterans Affairs at Bedford, Massachusetts. The ideas here do not represent those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.     

Price floors and competition

A potential source of instability of many economic models is that agents have little incentive to stick with the equilibrium. We show experimentally that this can matter with price competition. The control variable is a price floor, which increases the cost of deviating from equilibrium. According to traditional theory, a higher floor allows competitors to obtain higher profits. Behaviorally, the opposite result obtains with two (but not with four) competitors. An error model, which builds on Luce (Individual Choice Behavior, 1959), can adequately describe supra-Nash pricing with a low-floor, but then fails to capture the overall pro-competitive effect of a high-floor seen for duopolies.     

要素与资产价格重估背景下当前非典型通胀的表现及治理

当前我国经济转型和市场化进程,以及中国近三十年来的发展战略是催生当前通胀发生的体制背景.此次通胀的发生有着"混合型通货膨胀"的特征,体现为货币过剩和结构性的非典型通胀.要理解这种特征事实,需要深入分析当前我国经济增长和转型的体制背景,以及宏观经济变量的互动机制.此类通胀治理问题的关键在于有效的政策搭配.     

出口非正常低价分析

我国出口贸易中存在的非正常低价现象,不利于我国对外贸易乃至整个国民经济的持续健康发展。本文对这种非正常低价进行归纳分析,提出界定方法,并从产业结构、企业和监管三个方面分析其产生的原因,认为非正常低价的"株连效应"会使质量过得硬的"中国制造"也受到牵连、诘难。政府和企业应共同努力,促使出口产品价格的理性回归。     

特征价格法在房地产价格指数中的应用

特征价格法（Hedonic method）是将房地产价格变动中的质量特征因素进行分解,以显现出各项特征的隐含价格。并从价格的总变动中逐项剔除质量特征变动的影响,达到仅仅反映纯价格变动的目的。本文通过双重Imputation过程估计缺失价格和剔除异常值的影响,解决了可比性问题,并增强了Hedonic模型的稳定性。     

Price equilibrium in address models of product differentiation: unit-elastic demand

Summary. I present a class of address models of product differentiation with unit-elastic individual demand and show the existence of Nash equilibrium in prices under assumptions on utility functions and the taste and income heterogeneity across consumers. This paper complements the work by Caplin and Nalebuff (1991, Econometrica), who analyze unit demand models of product differentiation. Received: December 28, 1998; revised version: September 5, 2001     

易发生价格竞争的产业特征及企业策略

价格竞争已是我国企业惯常采用的策略行为。本文以彩电行业为例 ,从产品特征、产业生命周期等 6大方面揭示了易发生价格竞争的产业特征 ,提出产业内企业可行的价格战应对策略 ,其结论具有一般性 ,并为预测价格战的发生提供了微观基础。     

房价水平、差异化产品区位分布与城市体系

地级及以上城市体系的扁平化趋势可能是我国经济增长粗放、产能过剩的体现。本文将Thünen模型中房价水平对差异化产品区位分布的影响关系植入到新经济地理学Krugman-Helpman模型,详细阐述城市房价水平过快上涨(特别是大型城市)对差异化产品区位选择产生扩散倾向的内在机制,并利用1998—2007年中国地级及以上城市的相关数据进行检验。通过计量模型的参数估计,我们发现,Krugman-Helpman模型中导致城市体系扁平化趋势的"非黑洞"条件在中国是成立的。这一结论意味着,通过遏制房价水平非正常过快上涨等方法来扭转城市体系的扁平化趋势可能对调整经济结构与增长方式等具有启示意义。     

财政政策与价格水平的决定

价格水平是如何决定的呢 ?是否正如弗里德曼曾经说过的“通货膨胀总是 ,而且永远是一个货币现象”一样 ,通货膨胀仅仅是一个货币现象呢 ?从 2 0世纪 90年代开始 ,人们纷纷给出了不同的看法。本文通过两个模型给出了价格水平决定的财政理论 ,指出价格水平由政府债券的实际值与政府财政剩余相等来决定     

物价稳定与房价：货币政策视角

住房价格变化是货币政策需要关注的重要指标。本文在梳理现有文献的基础上,研究了物价稳定与房价变动的关系,发现房价是物价变动的重要原因,而M1和贷款利率是房价变动的格兰杰原因。通过进一步建立结构性VAR模型,我们发现房价受到贷款利率影响最大,而物价受到货币供应量的影响最大。针对房价与物价变动的三个场景可以采取不同的货币政策操作：1、房价过快增长,物价保持稳定。此时为了避免房价对未来物价的冲击,又不影响到当前物价的稳定,可以提高贷款利率,并保持相对宽松的货币供给以对冲房价下跌对物价的不利影响,达到抑制房价而不影响物价的效果。2、房价和物价双双过快增长。此时,应调整贷款利率、准备金率和货币供应量,三管齐下加以治理。3、物价过快增长,而房价较为稳定。为了避免打压房价,可以不调整贷款利率、准备金率,仅控制货币供应量。     

Price discrimination with a resource constraint

Introducing an aggregate resource constraint into Mussa and Rosen's [Mussa, M., Rosen, S., 1978. Monopoly and product quality. Journal of Economic Theory 18 (2), 301–317] model of monopoly price discrimination induces an upwards distortion in product quality for high valuation consumers because the standard downward distortions in product quality for other consumers relax the resource constraint.