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.     

On intrabrand and interbrand competition: The strategic role of fees and royalties

We examine oligopolistic markets with both intrabrand and interbrand competition. We characterize equilibrium contracts involving a royalty (or wholesale price) and a fee when each upstream firm contracts with multiple downstream firms. Royalties control competition between own downstream firms at the expense of making them passive against rivals. When the number of downstream firms is endogenous, each upstream firm chooses to have only one downstream firm. This result is in sharp contrast to previous literature where competitors benefit by having a larger number of independent downstream firms under only fixed fee payments. We discuss why allowing upstream firms to charge per-unit payments in addition to fixed fees dramatically alters their strategic incentives.     

Farmers adoption of integrated crop protection and organic farming: Do moral and social concerns matter?

We investigate empirically the role of moral and social concerns in farmers' decision to adopt integrated crop protection (IP) and organic farming (OF). A survey questionnaire has been sent to 1286 fruit-growers and vegetable producers located in the French areas of Alpes de Haute Provence, Hautes-Alpes and Vaucluse. Analysis of individual responses (N = 243) shows that, although economic concerns play a strong role, a significant number of respondents give high importance to moral and social ones. We also examine how these considerations matter according to different crop protection strategies, that is, conventional farming, IP and OF. Using a multinomial logistic regression, we find that (1) social concerns (e.g., showing to others one's environmental commitment) drive both IP and OF adoption, (2) moral concerns (e.g., do not feel guilty about one's choices) increase the probability of organic farming adoption only, and (3) farmers who give high importance to economic concerns (e.g., cutting production costs) are less likely to adopt OF.     

Credible delegation

We show that the vertical delegation of decision-making authority to agent firms can act as a credible strategic commitment even when contracts are unobservable (or renegotiable) if and only if multilateral delegation is combined with decentralized ownership of the agent firms. In this case, the possibility of renegotiation of other agents’ contracts constrains the set of contracts acceptable to each agent. Delegation may induce more or less aggressive behavior, depending on the nature of within-structure competition among the agent firms. Thus, delegation may be a valuable, credible strategic commitment mechanism when strategies are either substitutes or complements.     

Unbundling the local loop

We study competition for high bandwidth services in the telecommunications industry by introducing the possibility of unbundling the local loop, where leased lines permit the entrant to provide services without building up its own infrastructure. We use a dynamic model of technology adoption and study the incentives of the entrant to lease loops and compete “service-based”, and/or to build up a new and more efficient infrastructure and compete “facility-based”, given the rental price.We show that the incumbent sets too low a rental price for its loops; hence, the entrant adopts the new technology too late from a social welfare perspective. The distortion may appear not only on the timing of technology adoption but also on the type (quality) of the new technology to be adopted. We also show that while regulating the rental price may suffice to achieve socially desirable outcomes, a sunset clause does not improve social welfare.     

Shopping hours and price competition

This paper develops an argument why retail prices may rise in response to the deregulation of opening hours. We make this point in a model of imperfect duopolistic competition. In a deregulated market retailers view the choice of opening hours as a means to increase the degree of perceived product differentiation thus relaxing price competition. If the consumers’ preference intensity for time is sufficiently high the equilibrium configuration has asymmetric shopping hours where one retailer stays open for longer than the other. Both retailers charge higher prices than under regulation, and both are strictly better off.     

Double marginalization and cost pass-through: Weyl–Fabinger and Cowan meet Spengler and Bresnahan–Reiss

Consider the classical double marginalization problem of single-product successive monopolies. We show that the ratio of the cost pass-through at the final sale relative to that at the wholesale level is characterized by the curvature of inverse demand in the final market. We also apply Cowan’s (2012) method, which utilizes the idea of pass-through in an analysis of third-degree price discrimination, to compare consumer surplus under vertical integration and separation.     

General equilibrium models of monopolistic competition: A new approach

We analyze a class of ‘large group’ Chamberlinian monopolistic competition models by applying different concepts of functional separability to the same set of first-order conditions for utility maximization. We show that multiplicatively quasi-separable (MQS) functions yield ‘constant relative risk aversion’ (CRRA), and, therefore ‘constant elasticity of substitution’ (CES), functions, whereas additively quasi-separable (AQS) functions yield ‘constant absolute risk aversion’ (CARA) functions. We then show that the CARA specification sheds new light on: (i) pro-competitive effects, i.e., profit-maximizing prices are decreasing in the mass of competing firms; and (ii) a competitive limit, i.e., profit-maximizing prices converge to marginal costs when the mass of competing firms becomes arbitrarily large.     

Private labels, price rivalry, and public policy

The article examines (i) why low-quality private labels are introduced in some product categories and not in others, (ii) how the existence of a low-quality private label affects the pricing of a competing national brand, and (iii) how consumers’ surplus and welfare are affected by private labels. We find that the potential for private label introduction may—in return for national brand exclusivity in that particular retail store (exclusive dealing)—lead to price concessions from the producer of the national brand. If the national brand producer decides not to offer an exclusivity contract, a private label is introduced. In this case, private label introduction may lead to higher retail prices on national brands, which can be detrimental to consumer welfare as well as total welfare. We argue that our results have important implications for the interpretation of empirical results and the public policy towards national brands     

Transfer fee regulations in European football

We analyze the impact of three different transfer fee systems on payoffs, contract lengths, training and effort incentives in European football. The different regimes, being used until 1995 (“pre-Bosman”), currently in use (“Bosman”), and recently approved (“Monti”) differ with respect to the transfer fee an initial club is entitled to depending on whether a player has a valid contract or not. We show that the different systems differ only with respect to the contract length if the contract which maximizes the expected joint surplus of the initial club and the player is feasible under each system. Otherwise, regime P is strictly dominated by regime B in terms of expected social welfare. Regime M leads to higher effort but lower incentives to invest in training compared to system B.     

Efficiency and surplus bounds in Cournot competition

We derive bounds on the ratios of deadweight loss and consumer surplus to producer surplus under Cournot competition. To do so, we introduce a parameterization of the degree of curvature of market demand using the parallel concepts of ρ-concavity and ρ-convexity. The “more concave” is demand, the larger the share of producer surplus in overall surplus, the smaller is consumer surplus relative to producer surplus, and the lower the ratio of deadweight loss to producer surplus. Deadweight loss over total potential surplus is at first increasing with demand concavity, then eventually decreasing.     

Mechanism design with collusive supervision

We analyze an adverse selection environment with third party supervision. The supervisor is partly informed of the agent's type. The supervisor and the agent collude while interacting with the principal. Contracting with the agent directly and ignoring the presence of the supervisor constitutes the no-supervision benchmark. We show that delegating to the supervisor reduces the principal's payoff compared to the no-supervision benchmark under a standard condition on the distribution of the agent's types. In contrast, if the principal contracts with both the agent and the supervisor, there exists a mechanism that improves the principal's payoff over the no-supervision payoff.     

Comparative statics for oligopoly: A generalized result

We perform comparative statics for a general model of asymmetric oligopoly and derive a concise formula for the response of one firm to a marginal change in its rival’s strategic variable, taking into account the responses of all other firms. We obtain the conditions under which the sign of this response coincides with that of the mixed second-order partial derivative of the firm’s payoff function. We then propose a distinction between gross and net strategic relationships (i.e., strategic substitute and complement).     

Unilateral production restrictions in a dynamic duopoly

This paper examines a dynamic game of exploitation of a productive asset by a duopoly. A closed-loop Nash equilibrium of the game is constructed and used to analyze the effects of a unilateral production restriction. Surprisingly, such unilateral action may result in a decrease of the long-run asset's stock. We also exhibit production restrictions that can result simultaneously in an increase of the asset's stock and the long-run profits of the firm that is being imposed the production restriction. Moreover, a unilateral decrease of the production of one firm can induce its rival to also decrease its production.     

Competition and inter-firm credit: Theory and evidence from firm-level data in Indonesia

Using firm-level data we investigate the relationship between trade credit and suppliers' market structure and find a ∩-shaped relationship between competition and trade credit, with a discontinuous increase in credit provision between monopoly and duopoly. This “big jump” arises because monopolists are more likely to not offer any trade credit than firms in competitive environments. Our model exploits the fundamentally different nature between cash and trade credit sales, arguing that firms are unable to commit ex ante to a trade credit price. We show that monopolists will often sell only on cash, while credit is always provided in competitive environments.     

Strategic interaction between futures and spot markets

We study an oligopolistic industry where firms are able to sell in a futures market at infinitely many moments prior to the spot market. A kind of Folk-theorem is established: any outcome between perfect competition and Cournot can be sustained in equilibrium. We then find that the Cournot outcome can be sustained by a renegotiation-proof equilibrium. However, this is not true for the competitive outcome. Furthermore, only the monopolistic outcome is renegotiation-proof if firms can buy and sell in the futures market. These results suggest, contrary to existing literature, that the introduction of futures markets may have an anti-competitive effect.     

Mutual supervision in preshipment inspection programs

Preshipment inspection (PSI) programmes are implemented in many developing countries to assist governments in the collection of revenue at their borders. These programs consist of the delegation of the inspection of imports to a private firm. To study these PSI programmes, we develop a hierarchical agency model in which the government authority can rely on two supervisors, namely the private inspection firm and the customs administration, to control importers' declarations. The government's optimal contract is fully characterized. We devote some attention to the inspection policy and its comparative statics properties. In particular, we identify the situations in which PSI programmes are revenue enhancing. We also discuss the reconciliation policy, i.e. what to do in case of conflicting inspection reports by the inspection firm and the customs administration. In the optimal mechanism, mutual supervision between the inspection firm and the customs administration is used to provide adequate incentives to all parties.     

Technology, agglomeration, and regional competition for investment

Abstract.  Competition for firms by region has a long-standing history, and the academic literature has debated whether such competition is efficient. We develop a model that explores technology development by firms facing regional competition for their investment and examine the endogenous determination of region policy, firm technology, and agglomeration externalities. We find a new source of inefficiency – regional competition leads firms to inefficiently distort their development and selection of production technology to improve their standing in the regional competition for their investment. We show that these inefficient firm decisions on technology and location can also weaken agglomeration externalities.     

The effect of crises on firm exit and the moderating effect of firm size

The liability of smallness assumption suggests that smaller firms face higher exit risks. However, does it apply during crises? We show that during downturns size reduces firms’ exit risk by less; the hazard rate increases more rapidly in size.     

Product quality,advertising intensity and market size

We develop a model of product differentiation in which firms strategically compete in product quality and advertising intensity. Products exhibit a combination of vertical and horizontal differentiation. A consumer’s utility has a stochastic relationship with quality, but they are more likely to prefer a higher quality good. Consumers face a trade-off between higher quality goods and price. Increased competition leads to less advertising, but may result in higher or lower quality products offered in the market.