Oligopoly under incomplete information: On the welfare effects of price discrimination

We study competition by firms that simultaneously post (potentially nonlinear) tariffs to consumers who are privately informed about their tastes. Market power stems from informational frictions, in that consumers are heterogeneously informed about firms’ offers. In the absence of regulation, all firms offer quantity discounts. As a result, relative to Bertrand pricing, imperfect competition benefits disproportionately more consumers whose willingness to pay is high, rather than low. Regulation imposing linear pricing hurts the former but benefits the latter consumers. While consumer surplus increases, firms’ profits decrease, enough to drive down utilitarian welfare. By contrast, improvements in market transparency increase utilitarian welfare, and achieve similar gains on consumer surplus as imposing linear pricing, although with limited distributive impact. On normative grounds, our analysis suggests that banning price discrimination is warranted only if its distributive benefits have a weight on the societal objective.     

Robust exclusion and market division through loyalty discounts

We show that loyalty discounts create an externality among buyers because each buyer who signs a loyalty discount contract softens competition and raises prices for all buyers. This externality can enable an incumbent to use loyalty discounts to effectively divide the market with its rival and raise prices. If loyalty discounts also include a buyer commitment to buy from the incumbent, then loyalty discounts can also deter entry under conditions in which ordinary exclusive dealing cannot. With or without buyer commitment, loyalty discounts will increase profits while reducing consumer welfare and total welfare as long as enough buyers exist and the entrant does not have too large a cost advantage. These propositions are true even if the entrant is more efficient and the loyalty discounts are above cost and cover less than half the market. We also prove that these propositions hold without assuming economies of scale, downstream competition, buyer switching costs, financial constraints, limits on rival expandability, or any intra-product bundle of contestable and incontestable demand.     

On the Desirability of Compatibility with Product Selection

The paper analyses a three-stage game where two integrated system suppliers first decide whether to provide compatible system components, then choose the product specifications of their two offered components, and finally set prices. Contrary to results with exogenous product characteristics, the achievement of compatibility does not improve social welfare here. Given the assumed distribution of the consumers' preferences on the product space, consumers' losses from the changed product designs under compatibility outweigh the gains from these changes and from the availability of two additional system goods. Nevertheless, one firm ensures compatibility, if compatibility costs do not exceed a certain threshold.     

An antitrust analysis of bundled loyalty discounts

Consider a monopolist in one market that faces competition in a second market. Bundled loyalty discounts, in which customers receive a price break on the monopoly good in exchange for making all purchases from the monopolist, have ambiguous welfare effects. Such discounts should not always be treated as a form of predatory pricing. In some settings, they act as tie-in sales. Existing tests for whether such discounts violate competition laws do not track changes in consumer surplus or total surplus. We apply a new test to an illustrative example based on SmithKline that assumes the “tied” market has homogeneous goods. If the tied market is characterized by Hotelling competition, bundling by the monopolist causes the rival firm to reduce its price. In numerical examples, we find that this can deter entry or induce exit.     

Investigating the impacts of time delays on trade

Time delays due to inefficient customs and administrative procedures have become a leading non-tariff barrier (NTB) that restrict international trade and impair social welfare. This paper investigates how time delays affect product quality, product price, trade flow, and social welfare, using data on the days it takes to clear customs in 96 countries. We explore the impacts of time delays on product quality and price with different levels of perishability. We find that longer time delays at the border would significantly decrease highly perishable agricultural products' quality and price. We also find that for highly perishable agricultural products, improved and simplified customs delays would increase trade flows and social welfare of importing countries.     

Asymmetry in capacity and the adoption of all-units discounts

In many abuse of dominance antitrust cases, the dominant firm adopts pricing schemes involving all-units discounts, whereas its smaller competitors often use simple linear pricing. We provide a game-theoretic justification for the observed asymmetry in pricing practices by studying a model in which a firm with full capacity faces a capacity-constrained rival. The asymmetry in capacity between the firms, which gives rise to the captive market, allows the dominant firm to take advantage of the quantity commitment through all-units discounts while the capacity-constrained rival is induced to offer simple linear pricing.     

Effects of asymmetric information on airport congestion management mechanisms

We study and compare three different mechanisms for capacity (slot) allocation in a congested airport when airlines have one-dimensional private information: direct allocation of slots, differentiated tolls and slot auctions. With perfect information, direct allocation is a first best policy which can be implemented through Pigouvian taxes or slot auctions; the mechanisms are equivalent in terms of social welfare. With the introduction of asymmetric information this equivalence is lost: direct allocation is always ex-post inefficient and, in some cases, tolls and subsequent quantity delegation is a better alternative social welfare wise. Auctions may be superior or inferior to tolls. We further show that naïve application of Pigouvian tolls is sub-optimal when imperfect information exists.     

政府支出的构成、宏观经济波动与社会福利——基于动态随机一般均衡的视角

基于包含政府支出不同构成成分的NK-DSGE模型,本文对政府支出不同构成成分的宏观经济效应以及社会福利效应进行了分析。结果表明：（1）生产性政府支出对于产出具有最大且持续性最强的冲击效应,并且对于消费具有“挤入效应”;（2）相对而言,教育和医疗等对于私人消费具有完全替代性的政府支出对于私人消费具有最大且持续性最强的冲击效应;（3）相对而言,生产性政府支出冲击引起了最大的社会福利损失,而教育和医疗等对于私人消费具有完全替代性的政府支出冲击引起的社会福利损失则相对较小。由于我国政府偏好于生产性政府支出,因而本文的研究结论表明,在当前内需不足的背景下,增加教育和医疗等对于私人消费具有完全替代性的政府支出有利于促进消费、拉动内需,并且这一方面政府支出的增加也有利于降低政策引起的社会福利损失。     

企业社会责任运动测评指标体系实证研究--消费者视角

本文基于消费者视角，开发了一组用于测评企业社会责任运动的量表体系并对其进行了实证检验。这组测评体系共包含16个具体的指标，构成回馈社会、赞助教育文化等社会公益事业、保护消费者权益、保护自然环境、承担经济方面的责任等五个维度。实证检验结果显示其具有较高的测评信度和效度．基于该量表体系所测评的企业社会责任运动业绩感知水平与消费者的企业信赖感和忠诚度显著相关。研究结论反映了中国消费者对企业承担社会责任的期待和评价标准．为研究人员提供了一个测评企业社会责任运动的工具，也为企业开展社会责任运动指出了具体方向。     

Assessing horizontal mergers under uncertain efficiency gains

The analysis of horizontal mergers hinges on a tradeoff between unilateral effects and efficiency gains. We examine the role of uncertainty in this tradeoff. In theory, the attitude towards uncertainty depends on the curvature of the social objective function. On the one hand, adjustment effects, both on the consumers' and firms' sides, tend to make consumers' surplus and firms' profits convex. On the other hand, pass-through effects may act in the opposite direction. We show that convexity prevails in a number of situations, including the most general linear demand model. Implications for empirical merger analysis are exposed.     

Analysis of the newsboy problem with fuzzy demands and incremental discounts

This paper proposes an analysis method for the single-period (newsboy) inventory problem with fuzzy demands and incremental quantity discounts. In fuzzy environments, the availability of the quantity discount makes the analysis of the associated model more complex. The proposed analysis method is based on ranking fuzzy number and optimization theory. By applying the Yager ranking method, the fuzzy total cost functions with different unit purchasing costs are transformed into convex piecewise nonlinear functions. To effectively and efficiently find the optimal inventory policy, the proofs of two properties regarding the relative position between the price break and minimums of these nonlinear functions are proposed. The closed-form solutions to the optimal order quantities are also derived. Four cases of a numerical example are solved to demonstrate the validity of the proposed analysis method. It is clear that the proposed methodology is applicable to further cases with different types of quantity discounts and other more complicated cases. More importantly, managerial implications are also provided for decision-makers’ references.     

企业社会责任的实现--基于消费者选择的分析

本文建立了一个基于消费者选择的分析框架。分析企业社会责任标准、消费者补贴政策对企业策略的影响及其社会经济效果。研究发现：在市场可有效分割的前提下，企业实行无差异市场策略更能规避经营风险；若无政策干涉．企业无论采取差异化市场策略或无差异市场策略，最终提供的社会责任总量相等：实施企业社会责任标准不一定会提高企业社会责任总体水平，若同时辅以消费者补贴政策，最终可以从经济、制度两方面动因促使企业承担社会责任；影响企业策略的主要变量是责任市场规模及消费者对责任产品的偏好强度，消费者企业社会责任教育、企业社会责任信息的显性化是影响消费者选择，促使企业改善社会责任绩效的有效途径。     

Tariff-mediated network effects versus strategic discounting: Evidence from German mobile telecommunications

Mobile telecommunication operators routinely charge subscribers lower prices for calls on their own network than for calls to other networks (on-net discounts). Studies on tariff-mediated network effects suggest this is due to large operators using on-net discounts to damage smaller rivals. Alternatively, research on strategic discounting suggests that small operators use on-net discounts to advertise with low on-net prices. We test the relative strength of these effects using data on tariff setting in German mobile telecommunications between 2001 and 2009. We find that large operators are more likely to offer tariffs with on-net discounts but there is no consistently significant difference in the magnitude of discounts. Our results suggest that tariff-mediated network effects are the main cause of on-net discounts.     

构建基于三重底线的绿色供应链:欧盟与美国的环境规制比较

一方面,环境日益恶化、资源日益匮乏,解决环境问题的绿色供应链构建受到普遍关注;另一方面,产品质量安全和产品本身缺陷的大量曝光及其召回事件,严重威胁着消费者的健康收益。文中首先以三重底线原则(经济底线、社会底线和环境底线)和产品外部性为基础,将绿色供应链分为两类:以关注消费者健康收益为核心的社会底线供应链、以关注环境生态收益为核心的环境底线供应链。接着,比较了欧盟的延伸生产者责任和美国的产品安全监管策略。最后,从产品生命周期不同阶段,经济、社会与环境等视角,以生产者、消费者与政府为对象,分析并得出:构建社会底线供应链需要完善的内部揭发机制与召回机制相结合;构建环境底线供应链需要减缓产品引入速度,以及面向环境的产品设计与综合性回收网络相结合。     

Trust production and privacy concerns on the Internet: A framework based on relationship marketing and social exchange theory

Trust plays a key role in the electronic market that involves high uncertainty and lack of legal protection. Building trust online is proposed as a solution to consumers' privacy concerns. Drawing from relationship marketing and social exchange theory, this study examined several key mechanisms that can help increase customers' trust of e-commerce and decrease privacy concerns. These mechanisms include characteristic-based (e.g., community), transaction process-based (e.g., repeated purchases), and institution-based trust production (e.g., digital certificate).     

Minimum Quality Standards and Collusion

We model the introduction of a minimum quality standard in a vertically differentiated duopoly. We extend the literature by determining the standard endogenously, showing that the maximisation of social welfare entails an increase in the surplus accruing to consumers served by the low quality firm and a decrease in the surplus of the remaining consumers. Then, we consider the effects of the standard on the stability of price collusion, proving that the standard makes it more difficult for firms to collude if consumers are sufficiently rich.     

经济适用房建设招标机制的比较分析

在经济适用房项目开发建设中充分利用市场机制尤其是招标机制,有利于提高项目的开发建设效率。对带有转移支付招标机制和最高限价招标机制分析表明,不同的招标机制在降低开发成本、增加供给量、揭示开发企业的实际成本和提高社会福利水平等方面,都具有不同的影响。     

All-Unit Discounts and the Problem of Surplus Division

All-unit discounts (AUD) are non-linear pricing schemes whereby buyers who reach a specific quantity threshold get rebates also retroactively for all units bought before. This sets high incentives for buyers to meet the quantity threshold, and may also have foreclosure effects on potential entrants. In a model where an incumbent faces second-period competition by entrants, we show that AUD can indeed be abused to shift rents from entrants. In contrast to exclusive dealing which is usually seen as very similar to AUD, inefficient quantity distortions may arise even with perfect information if and only if there is sufficiently intense competition among potential entrants.     

Why Don’t Most Merchants Use Price Discounts to Steer Consumer Payment Choice?

Recent legislation and court settlements in the United States allow merchants to use price discounts to steer customers to pay with means of payment that are less costly to merchants. We use transaction data to compute rough estimates of the expected net cost reduction by merchant type of giving debit card and cash price discounts. We find that steering consumers to debit and cash via simple price discounts reduces most merchants’ card processing cost; however, this reduction is small and may be insufficient to offset the increase in the cost of administering price menus that vary by payment instrument.     

Top-floor discounts in residential buildings: Evidence from South Korea

This study assesses the phenomenon of resale price discounts for top-floor units of residential buildings, or “top-floor discounts.” Using 1.9 million resale transactions of apartment units from South Korea, we find that top-floor discounts range from 1.3% to 8.3% of resale prices. We hypothesize that top-floor discounts exist because of larger heating/cooling costs for these units relative to those on lower levels, resulting from relatively more extreme variation in indoor temperatures unique to top-floor apartment units. Using a household-level survey data on energy consumption and exploiting variations in weather conditions and roof material across time and regions throughout South Korea, we provide evidence in support of our hypothesis.