The Premium–Dividend Competition in the Prewar Japanese Life Insurance Industry: A Game-Theoretic Interpretation

Between 1917 and 1935, Japanese life insurance companies competed with each other on a premium–dividend basis. We propose that such competition took the form of product differentiation, exploiting differences in discount rates or price expectations among policy-holders. Our model shows that under some conditions the introduction of such competition can be beneficial to the competitive companies. It is shown that these conditions were satisfied at that time, and that more detailed factors are also consistent with the model.
JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D43, G22, N25.     

反垄断调查的一个鉴别：一致性定价行为背后的差异与合谋

如何区分成本上涨时企业同时涨价的行为究竟是价格合谋还是寡头竞争的企业正常的价格调整行为？这是反垄断执法机构面临的一个难题。本文通过数理模型证明了无论企业进行伯川德竞争还是古诺竞争，寡头竞争的企业的定价随着成本的变化存在一个连续调整路径，而组成卡特尔的企业的定价则会随着成本的变化出现一个不连续的跳跃。因此反垄断执法机构在观察到企业的一致性定价行为之后，如果能从以往的价格监测纪录中发现这些企业在成本下跌时，价格存在着更大幅度的下调，则可以据此怀疑这些企业存在着价格合谋，应开展更深入的调查来搜集这些企业违反《反垄断法》的全面证据。     

An Ordered-Probit Analysis of Price and Performance in Competitively Tendered Contracts

Abstract
This article adopts an ordered-probit estimation procedure to investigate the influence of competitive tendering on contract price and performance. Using a two-equation recursive system the findings of Domberger, Hall and Li (1995) turned out to be robust to the ordered-probit methodology which confirmed the strong negative effect of competitive tendering on contract price. The evidence also suggested that performance was either enhanced or remained the same in the presence of competition. Overall, the results of this investigation support the view that competitive tendering generates efficiency gains without adverse effects on quality of service .     

Small Leading Firms*

We formally analyze the question of whether a price leader must control a large share of the market. Our main result is that if other producers have rising marginal costs and behave as price takers, even the smallest firm in a competitive industry with a rising supply curve can enhance its profits by cutting output and raising price, becoming a price leader. Therefore, we would expect pure competition to be destroyed under these technological conditions.     

A generalized framework for endogenous timing in duopoly games and an application to price-quantity competition

This paper extends the analysis of duopoly market by distinguishing two types of competition: (i) the basic form of competition where each firm is unrestricted in its choice of price and quantity and (ii) the non-basic form of competition where firms’ strategic choices over price and quantity are limited a priori. Our analysis focuses on the former rather than the latter. Under a very general setting of concave industrial revenue and asymmetric convex costs, we show that each firm typically makes more profit in the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) of the leader-follower price-quantity competition, one of the basic competition forms, than in the SPNE of the leader-follower price competition and that each firm always makes more profit under simultaneous move price-quantity competition than under simultaneous move price competition. We establish a generalized framework for endogenous timing in duopoly games which is capable of embodying and overcoming the inconsistency across the existing three frameworks in the field. We highlight the advantages of a 3-period general framework.     

Analysis of threshold cointegration with asymmetric adjustments in the Hong Kong grocery industry

High market concentration in the Hong Kong grocery industry has been prevalent over many years with the domination of a few large supermarket chains. However, no research has been conducted on the price dynamics between the supermarket and non-supermarket sectors to investigate whether the non-supermarket sector can impose competitive discipline on the dominating supermarket chains. We argue that standard cointegration tests cannot allow for transaction costs and distinguish whether the price co-movement is attributable to price competition or collusion. Our study therefore fills this research gap by adopting the threshold cointegration tests in a three-regime threshold vector error-correction model to account for the asymmetric price adjustment dynamics between supermarket and non-supermarket sectors of Hong Kong and evaluate the market power of the supermarket sectors in the presence of transaction costs. Our results favour the presence of cointegration between the supermarket and non-supermarket price indices with asymmetric adjustment dynamics. We interpret the results of statistically significant downward price adjustments in the outer-band regimes as the evidence of mutual price competition. Nevertheless, the supermarket sector has stronger market power than the non-supermarket sector, and therefore can sustain higher price level without inducing substantial competition pressures inside the neutral band.     

Pro‐Consumer Price Ceilings under Regulatory Uncertainty*

We examine optimal price ceilings when the regulator is uncertain about demand and maximizes expected consumer surplus. With perfect competition, if regulatory uncertainty is large enough, then softer intervention is called for, with the price ceiling set at a relatively high level compared with a full information scenario. In an imperfectly competitive setting where symmetric firms compete in supply functions, with large enough uncertainty, the optimal ceiling increases with the degree of competition, so greater competitive pressure justifies less restrictive regulation. Under perfect competition, we also determine a cut‐off level of rationing efficiency below which a price ceiling should not be used.     

Analyzing Modes of Foreign Entry: Greenfield Investment versus Acquisition

This paper studies the entry decision of a multinational enterprise into a foreign market. Two alternative entry modes for a foreign direct investment are considered: greenfield investment versus acquisition. In contrast to existing approaches, the acquisition price and the profits under both entry modes are endogenously determined. Interestingly, we find that the optimal entry mode decision is affected by the competition intensity in the market in a nonmonotonic way. When markets are very much or very little competitive, greenfield investment is the optimal entry mode, while for intermediate values it is acquisition.     

Sustaining Collusion under Economic Integration*

In this paper, we aim at investigating from a game‐theory perspective whether trade liberalization can promote a collusive two‐way trade. We show that, under Cournot competition, economic integration is anti‐competitive if collusive trade is a possible outcome of the repeated game; under price competition, the likelihood of collusive trade is a necessary but not sufficient condition for trade liberalization to be pro‐competitive. Furthermore, we show that economic integration may increase the scope for collusion irrespective of the firms’ strategic variable.     

An efficient privatization mechanism

We consider the privatization of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) of which markets can be opened to competition once privatization takes place and competitors can compete successfully against them in a few years. The currently used “Revenue Maximization (RM)” scheme maximizes the government revenue from privatization but does not provide incentives for the privatized SOE to charge a price lower than the monopoly price until competition arises. We propose the “Welfare Maximization (WM)” scheme, which induces the privatized SOE to charge a competitive price without resorting to regulation. Also, WM provides greater incentives for post-privatization cost reduction.     

VERs and Price Undertakings under the WTO*

Under the rules of the WTO, governments are prohibited from negotiating voluntary export restraints (VERs) but may negotiate price undertakings (i.e. import price minima). While these two policies can have identical effects in models of perfect competition, they can have very different economic consequences with imperfect competition. The model presented here shows that in a model of international Bertrand duopoly, a VER can result in lower domestic prices and profits than a price minimum regime. This suggests that price undertakings should also be prohibited under the WTO.     

Oligopoly with a large number of competitors: asymmetric limit result

We address how profitable innovation is in a competitive market by investigating the asymmetric oligopoly model in which 1 firm (innovator) has a cost advantage that is not drastic enough for her to become a monopolist, and by inducing asymmetric limit outcomes when the number of the other firms (laggard firms) goes to infinity. If the innovator is the Stackelberg leader, two cases can arise: (i) the innovator behaves as in the competitive market or (ii) she occupies the entire market but cannot make the price. If we consider Cournot competition, the innovator becomes the partial monopolist. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Competition and waiting times in hospital markets

This paper studies the impact of hospital competition on waiting times. We use a Salop-type model, with hospitals that differ in (geographical) location and, potentially, waiting time, and two types of patients: high-benefit patients who choose between neighbouring hospitals (competitive segment), and low-benefit patients who decide whether or not to demand treatment from the closest hospital (monopoly segment). Compared with a benchmark case of monopoly, we find that hospital competition leads to longer waiting times in equilibrium if the competitive segment is sufficiently large. Given a policy regime of hospital competition, the effect of increased competition depends on the parameter of measurement: Lower travelling costs increase waiting times, higher hospital density reduces waiting times, while the effect of a larger competitive segment is ambiguous. We also show that, if the competitive segment is large, hospital competition is socially preferable to monopoly only if the (regulated) treatment price is sufficiently high.     

Price competition when consumer behavior is characterized by conformity or vanity

It has long been recognized that the pleasure of consuming a good may be affected by the consumption choice of other consumers. In some cases, social pressures may lead to conformity; in some others, individuals may feel the need of exclusiveness under the form of vanity. Such externalities have proven to be important in several markets. However, the market implication of these externalities are still unclear. To investigate them, we propose to combine the consumption externality model and the spatial duopoly model. When conformity is present but not too strong, both firms remain in business but price competition is fiercer and results in lower prices. The market share of the large firm increases with the population size; as the population keeps rising, the large firm may serve the entire market and set a price that has the nature of a limit price. When conformity is strong enough, different equilibria may exist. In most of these equilibria, a single firm captures the whole market. At the other extreme, when vanity is at work, price competition is relaxed.     

Market Structure,Competition, and Welfare Change Due to Technological Innovations

This paper analyzes the change in social welfare brought about by a cost-reducing technological innovation. Each firm adopts a new technology at the expense of the other firms. Hence, competitive adoption of new technology can reduce social welfare. Because a technological innovation can change market structure in different ways under different kinds of competition it can cause quantity competition to generate greater social welfare than price competition does. [020]     

Gazprom and the complexity of the EU gas market: a strategy to define

Abstract

Confronted with an increasingly competitive market in the European Union and the credible threat of a new entrant in the form of liquefied natural gas imports from the United States, Gazprom’s traditional export strategy is open to question. The company must decide whether it should launch a price war in order passively to adapt to impending competition and its role as a ‘residual supplier’ to the EU gas market, or whether it should take advantage of the current price uncertainty. This article explores the scope for long-term strategic action by Gazprom other than simply engaging in a price war. It is argued that Gazprom could forge a position as a key player in the EU gas market capable of playing the same role as Saudi Arabia does in the global oil market.     

Modelling pharmaceutical price changes in Germany: a function of competition and regulation

In this article, price changes for pharmaceuticals in Germany are modelled as a function of regulation and competition. Changes in the regulatory environment, and in the competitive environment of a product, are taken into account. To follow the hierarchical structure, a four-level random intercept model was constructed. Price changes were allowed to vary randomly between drug classes, between different substances within a drug class, and between different manufacturers of a substance. This study provides evidence that two policy measures – reference pricing and temporary price freezes – succeeded in reducing prices in Germany between January 2004 and June 2006. For off-patent substances – depending on the competition faced by a drug – the effect of competition can be greater than the effect of regulation. The study, therefore, not only demonstrates the importance of competition between and within drug classes, it also provides evidence that generic entry has substantial effects on the prices of branded products.     

Safe Harbours in Merger Guidelines: What Should They Be?

Safe harbours in merger guidelines define post‐merger market concentration or concentration change thresholds below which proposed mergers are unlikely to be anti‐competitive; anti‐competitiveness is usually measured as a ‘substantial lessening of competition’. Yet competition agencies have different safe harbours. We used merger models to run many simulations involving a wide range of market structures and merger‐induced aggregations. The post‐merger unilateral price increases in these scenarios were used to gauge what the safe harbours should be to keep price increases below a specified threshold. The safe harbour thresholds commonly used were found typically to be too restrictive, in that they failed to screen out mergers that were almost certainly competitively benign.     

产业市场环境特征与企业战略风险

竞争战略理论一直强调产业市场环境对企业竞争绩效不确定性的影响,从产业竞争构成来看,这一环境可分为产业结构、产业演变、产业位势和产业合作关系,四种产业环境特征通过对竞争构成要素的改变进而影响到企业的长期绩效水平。这一产业环境系统构成了企业战略的外部性风险要素。产业结构性风险表现在产业结构的不确定性、竞争构成因素的变化和竞争战略的相对均衡性上。产业在从导入到成长、成熟、衰退的演变过程中,产业结构以其竞争要素产生根本性改变,最终影响到企业竞争的基础和生存的条件,导致投资陷阱和战略的非理性风险。以规模和市场份额为特征的产业住势风险同样表现在对产业市场结构稳定性的影响上,其风险在于能否保持理想市场份额和规模经济性。产业合作在共享利益的同时,存在着价格和数量的背叛以及效率、代价和学习不对称等产业合作风险。     

Price transmission and local market power: empirical evidence from the Austrian gasoline market

We analyse the impact of local market power on price margins and different dimensions of price adjustment dynamics (speed and asymmetry of price transmission) using data for a large number of individual gasoline stations in Austria. Specific attention is paid to threshold effects in price adjustment. Our results clearly suggest that the speed of price transmission between the Brent crude oil index and retail diesel prices is higher in a more competitive environment. While evidence on the relationship between local market power and asymmetries in the speed of price adjustment is mixed, our findings regarding asymmetries in price thresholds are clear: in regions where competition from neighbouring rivals is weak and/or consumers’ price elasticity of demand is low (stations located on the highway), positive thresholds significantly exceed negative ones, which corresponds to the ‘rockets and feathers phenomenon’. As expected, we observe that prices are lower in more competitive local markets.