房价上涨如何影响工业企业加成率：事实与机制

将“担保效应”和“挤出效应”纳入同一框架解释房价上涨对工业企业加成率的影响机制。在此基础上，根据中国工业企业数据对理论命题进行实证,研究结果为：总体上，房价上涨显著降低了中国工业企业加成率；分样本回归显示，民营、一线和热点二线城市、东部地区和资本密集型企业受房价上涨的负向“加成率效应”较强；作用渠道检验证实中国工业企业在房价上涨时整体上“担保效应”和“挤出效应”不显著，但企业出口产品质量和生产率显著下降，从价格和成本渠道分别降低了企业加成率；与房地产行业相关性和地区市场化指数显著影响企业的负向“加成率效应”。结论对“去库存”和提升工业企业竞争力政策协调具有参考意义。     

不完全竞争、贸易与资源配置扭曲

传统理论认为,随着全球化的深入,市场竞争加强,垄断程度会越来越低,因此当市场处于开放的状态下,贸易被认为能够帮助纠正垄断定价带来的资源配置扭曲。然而数据显示,行业间和地区间的成本加成异质性随着时间增长在不断扩大,贸易使垄断力量差异变大。由于行业进入壁垒不同,贸易对竞争程度不同的行业影响不同,进入壁垒低的行业由于更易于参与贸易,成本加成相比于进入壁垒高的行业进一步降低,这也预示着各行业间的成本加成差别将会变大,资源配置扭曲的程度加深。本文试图建立一个包含不完全竞争的一般均衡模型,说明开放部分行业的贸易政策会导致福利损失,而市场进入壁垒的消除能纠正不对称贸易自由化造成的资源配置扭曲。     

Firm and sectoral heterogeneity in markup variability

Many theoretical models assume that the markup of price over marginal costs is the same for all firms in a sector, irrespective of firm size, type, or efficiency. We analyze the distribution of markups for 70 Finnish sectors using a complete dataset, including both manufacturing and services sectors and firms of all sizes. In contrast to the constant markup hypothesis, we find (i) large differences in markups within sectors, (ii) higher markups for small firms and domestic firms, and (iii) greater markup heterogeneity in sectors with low capital-labour ratios and a large number of firms.     

Duopolists’ Retail Pricing Behavior in Multiple Markets

The law of one price asserts that, with costless trade, prices for identical goods in different countries should be equal after accounting for the exchange rate. The empirical literature suggests that exchange rate pass-through to prices is low and that the law of one price fails; instead, firms are more likely to price to market. This study adds to the literature by examining the pricing strategy of comic book firms within the context of the competition’s pricing behavior in a duopoly industry. Comic books, uniquely, display their retail prices in multiple countries on their cover giving us detailed information about the pricing behavior of each individual firm and their competition which allows us to test a pricing-to-market model. We find that an empirical model of an imperfectly applied law of one price outperforms a simple competitive, pricing-to-market model of pricing. Retail exchange rate pass-through rates between Canada and the United States average 76.8 %. This high exchange rate pass-through rate for comic books exists despite the existence of sticky prices and convenience pricing.     

Input trade liberalisation,institution and markup: Evidence from China's accession to the WTO

This paper investigates the effects of input trade liberalisation on firm markups and assesses how institutional environment affects such impacts by using Chinese firm‐level data. To identify the causal effects, we exploit the quasi‐natural experiment of China's WTO accession in 2001 and perform difference‐in‐differences estimation. The results show that input tariff liberalisation leads to a substantial increase in firm markups, and institutional environment significantly strengthens such an impact. We further uncover the underlying mechanisms through which input tariff liberalisation boosts firm markups, and show that both price and cost channels work for the input tariff cut effect on firm markups, of which the latter is much more important. In addition, we also demonstrate that input tariff cut significantly fosters aggregate markup growth, and the reallocation effect is found to be an important channel through which input tariff liberalisation boosts aggregate markup growth.     

Pricing Strategies of Software Vendors

Due to the economic characteristics specific to the software industry, pricing concepts existing in other industries cannot be transferred without adaptation. Therefore, this article provides an overview of pricing models for software. In this context we discuss the six parameters formation of prices, structure of payment flow, assessment base, price discrimination, price bundling, and dynamic pricing strategies. Furthermore, we refer to recent software delivery models, such as Software as a service. The results are based on literature research and empirical studies.     

Exchange rates and prices: Evidence from China

This article develops a pricing model that incorporates an industrial organization approach with the traditional quantity theory of money to explain the impact of exchange rates on consumer prices. Using time-series data on prices and exchange rates of China, the model replicates the main features of the observed facts: exchange rates influence consumer prices through changing import prices; money supply and output influence consumer prices following the quantity theory. The estimating results show that exchange-rate pass-through to consumer prices is low and increases from the short run to the long run. The extent of pass-through is likely to depend on markup adjustment and marginal costs.     

Determinants of price flexibility in oligopolistic markets: Evidence from austrian manufacturing

In this paper, we examine the impact of market structure (concentration) on three different characteristics of industrial pricing behavior: 1) the sensitivity of prices to cost and demand changes, 2) the speed of price adjustment, and 3) the asymmetry of price behavior. We find the relationship between concentration and the sensitivity of prices to cost changes to be the most robust one. Cost changes are less fully transmitted into prices in highly concentrated industries. Overall, differences in the pricing behavior across industries can be “explained” fairly well with industry differences in concentration, capital intensity, inventoriability, and the length of the production period.     

Why Have U.S. Prices Become Independent of Business Cycles?

This article analyzes the issue of price cyclicality from a Post Keynesian perspective. It shows that there are two key factors at the center of the mechanism for the sudden U.S. transition from counter‐cyclical to a‐cyclical price movement in the early 1980s. First, the cost pass‐through policy has been changed to ensure that the cyclical changes of input prices and/or labor productivity are absorbed more thoroughly and are thus reflected more frequently in profit markups than occurred prior to 1984. This relatively increased adaptability of the profit markups in the aggregate sense between the pricing periods cushions the direct effect of cyclical changes in the cost base on price cyclicality. Second, a structural change in the U.S. labor productivity's cyclical property has generated cost‐base stability during the post‐1984 period. Declines in hiring and firing costs and cutbacks in social security benefits have led the labor discipline effect to dominate the labor hoarding effect. This has allowed labor productivity to increase as the unemployment rate rises; thus, the cost base cyclicality has weakened, and prices have become less cyclical since 1984.     

The promise and peril of dynamic targeted pricing

Dynamic pricing is widely adopted in many industries, such as travel and insurance. These industries are also gaining extensive capabilities in identifying and segmenting customers, partly fueled by the increasing availability of data. It is natural to ask whether firms should take advantage of such developments by charging different prices to different customer segments. If so, under what conditions? We seek answers to these highly managerially relevant questions.We consider a market with two customer segments served by a monopolist. The monopolist can choose among a set of pricing strategies to exploit consumers’ inter-temporal preferences and/or inter-segment variations. At one end of the spectrum, the firm can charge a constant price to all customers, which is called static pricing. At the other end of the spectrum, the firm can charge different prices to different customer segments and vary these prices over time, which is referred to as dynamic targeted pricing. We systematically compare these alternative pricing strategies. We show that dynamic pricing without targeting can be more effective than static targeted pricing when customers are not very forward looking, which corroborates the findings in the empirical literature. Interestingly, we find that the monopolist can be worse off when she adopts targeting in addition to dynamic pricing. We conduct laboratory experiments to test several key model predictions. The studies show that individuals behave in a manner consistent with the predictions of our model.     

An Empirical Model of Automobile Engine Variant Pricing

This paper estimates a random-coefficients structural model of the demand for car model engine variants. It uses a new identification approach that assumes the mean unobserved quality is the same for all engine variants within a model. The demand estimates imply that absolute markups increase in horsepower within a car model, while percentage markups are constant or falling in horsepower. The estimated results–as well as simulations of a simple theory model–show that prices are not typically cost-plus-fixed-fee, and absolute markups may increase in quality.     

An Investigation of the Degree of Market Power in the Greek Manufacturing and Service Industries

This paper investigates the degree of market power in the Greek manufacturing and service industries over the period 1970–2007. The markup model developed by Hall (1988) and Roeger (1995) is taken into consideration where market power is expressed as the difference between the selling price and the marginal cost of production. The analysis will be conducted in three steps; the first step estimates the price-cost margin of the manufacturing and services industries over 1970–2007; the second step applies the cross section specification under which the markup ratio is obtained for the 23 manufacturing and 26 service 2-digit ISIC sectors of the panel sample; and the third step estimates the price-cost margin of the manufacturing and services industries for each year over 1973–2007 by employing the Hall-Roeger time series specification. The empirical findings suggest that both industries exert a positive markup ratio; however, the service industry appears to be less competitive than the manufacturing industry.     

The adjustment of global external balances: Does partial exchange-rate pass-through to trade prices matter?

This paper assesses whether partial exchange-rate pass-through to trade prices has important implications for the prospective adjustment of global external imbalances. To address this question, we develop and estimate an open-economy DSGE model in which pass-through is incomplete due to the presence of local currency pricing, distribution services, and a variable demand elasticity that leads to fluctuations in optimal markups. We find that the overall magnitude of trade adjustment is similar in a low and high pass-through environment with more adjustment in a low pass-through world occurring through movements in the terms of trade rather than real trade flows and through a larger response of the exchange rate.     

Unilateral Climate Policy and Competitiveness: Economic Implications of Differential Emission Pricing

Unilateral climate policy raises concerns about international competitiveness and emission leakage that result in preferential regulatory treatment of domestic energy‐intensive and trade‐exposed (EITE) industries. Our applied analysis of unilateral EU abatement illustrates the potential pitfalls of climate policy design which narrowly focuses on competitiveness concerns about EITE industries. The sector‐specific gains of differential emission pricing in favour of these branches must be traded off with the additional burden imposed on other industries. From the perspective of the unilaterally abating region preferential EITE emission pricing can induce non‐negligible excess cost as policy concedes (too) low emission prices to EITE industries and thereby foregoes relatively cheap abatement options in these sectors. With respect to global cost‐effectiveness of unilateral climate policy, we find that differential emission pricing in favour of EITE industries can reduce emission leakage and thereby provide global cost savings compared with uniform pricing. However, the scope for cost savings is limited and may change into substantial cost increases if unilateral reduction targets are moderate and EITE industries get close to exemptions.     

Empirical Generalizations in Search Engine Advertising

This article compares prices per click and search engine advertising (SEA) effectiveness across six countries and 15 industries over four years. We find that prices per click are highest in the United States and United Kingdom, as well as in the financial and Internet services industries, but are lower in retail than in services industries. In highly competitive markets, increases in SEA expenditures may increase prices per click that do not necessarily lead to higher advertising effectiveness, here measured as a higher number of clicks. To analyze and compare advertising effectiveness across industries, we decompose the effect of increases in SEA expenditures on prices per click (price effect) and number of clicks (quantity effect). A cross-country, cross-industry study shows that 44 percent of the increase in SEA expenditures is associated with more clicks and 56 percent with higher prices.     

The Effects of Competition,Liquidity and Exports on Markups: Evidence from the UK Food and Beverages Sector

This study investigates the pricing decisions of the UK food and beverages sector over 2007–2016. The markup model formulated by Hall (1988) and Roeger (1995) is employed where market power is expressed in terms of pricing decisions reflected by the difference between the price level and the marginal cost of production. The analysis is conducted under three steps: the first step estimates the markup ratio of the UK food and beverages sector over 2007–2016; the second step provides the price-cost margin of the 32 4 digit level NACE Rev.2 constituent industries over 2007–2016; and the last step tests the relationship between the cross-sectional estimates of market power and the structural effects of concentration, liquidity and exports over 2009, 2011, 2015 and 2016. The results suggest the presence of imperfect competitive conduct in the sector, while the three structural effects appear to have a significant influence on the pricing decisions of the UK food and beverages industries.     

Who bears the cost of a change in the exchange rate? Pass-through accounting for the case of beer

Nominal exchange rates are remarkably volatile. They ordinarily appear disconnected from the fundamentals of the economies whose currencies they price. These facts make up a classic puzzle about the international economy. If prices do not respond fully to changes in the nominal exchange rate, who bears the cost of such large and unpredictable changes: foreign firms, domestic firms, or domestic consumers? This study presents a new analysis of the sources of incomplete pass-through and then uses this analysis to re-examine its implications for social welfare. I develop and estimate a structural model that analyzes the sources of local-currency price stability for a particular industry. The model enables counterfactual simulations that quantify the relative importance of firms' local-cost components and markup adjustments in the incomplete transmission of exchange-rate shocks to prices and the effect of the exchange-rate shock on domestic and foreign firms' profits and on consumer surplus. The model is applied to a panel dataset of one industry with retail and wholesale prices for UPC-level products. I find that markup adjustments by manufacturers and the retailer explain roughly half of the incomplete transmission and local-cost components account for the other half. Foreign manufacturers generally bear a greater cost (or reap a greater benefit) following an exchange-rate-induced marginal-cost shock than do domestic consumers, domestic manufacturers, or the domestic retailer.     

Customer-class price discrimination by electric utilities

Despite the concentration on peak-load pricing in public utility pricing theory, electric utilities in the United States have divided consumers by customer type (residential, industrial, commercial) rather than time of use (peak, off-peak) in determining prices. In this paper a theory of customer-class pricing is developed which emphasizes the impact of demand characteristics on optimal prices and the utility's pricing incentives under regulation. It is shown that customer-class demand patterns matter in determining socially optimal prices, and that the rate-of-return regulated utility has an incentive to distort prices to manipulate demand in predictable ways.     

Pricing, price dispersion, and information: The discount brokerage industry

The paper provides an empirical analysis of the pricing behavior of firms within the discount brokerage industry, with emphasis on testing the role of costly information in affecting prices. Several empirical tests are performed that indicate that prices in this industry respond in ways hypothesized by theoretical models of markets operating under conditions of imperfect information. The industry is characterized by a wide degree of price dispersion that does not appear to simply reflect quality differences among firms. In addition, the variance of prices across geographic markets is associated with variables that theoretically should affect the levels of consumer information in those markets.     

Decomposing the effect of advertising: What happens in the retail channel?

The diverging interests of manufacturers and retailers famously give rise to the double marginalization problem but have consequences far beyond pricing. Advertising is another marketing instrument that is under the control of the manufacturer but its ultimate effect on consumer demand also depends on retailers’ pricing decisions. We decompose the effect of advertising in the channel and highlight an additional route through which advertising affects sales, namely via the changes in the retail price that a strategic retailer makes in response to changes in demand following manufacturer advertising. The total demand effect of advertising thus comprises the direct effects of advertising on market shares, and the indirect effects coming through adjustments that the retailer makes to the in-store prices of all the brands in a given product category in response to the shifted demand due to advertising. We match advertising data for four different categories (both food and non-food) to store-level scanner panel data, which also include information on wholesale prices. Controlling for wholesale prices, we establish in a reduced-form model that the retailer reacts to manufacturer advertising by changing retail prices instead of simply imposing a constant markup on the wholesale price. To further explore the role of the strategic response of the retailer in a systematic fashion and quantify the effects derived in the decomposition, we estimate a discrete-choice model of demand and determine the magnitude of the direct and indirect effects. We find that the indirect effect of advertising through retailer prices is about half the size of the direct effect, and thus substantively affects advertising effectiveness.