Technology Strategy And Product Diversity

This paper considers a three-stage game of a differentiated oligopoly: firms first make their entry decisions, then they choose production technologies and in the third stage of the game they decide product prices. The technology choice can be understood as selecting one from a pool of those recently available as well as developing a new technology through innovative activities. The resulting market equilibrium is then compared with the social optimum. The main conclusions are that a monopolistically competitive market will typically undersupply both product variety and production scale. R&D competition in a free entry differentiated oligopoly will lead to insufficient R&D investment at firm and industry levels.     

China’s competition and the export price strategies of developed countries

This paper analyzes the impact of Chinese competition on developed countries’ export prices. The empirical application is on Italy, one of the main European manufacturing exporters with exports at high risk of competition from China. Our results show that, following China’s entry into the WTO, the price strategies of Italian firms has been affected. While in general the increasing Chinese export competition resulted in an upgrading of products exported, the impact has been different according to the sector and technological level. The incentives to upgrade have been stronger for low technology sectors, where competition is tougher and varieties of products sold lower. To highlight quality differentials, and isolate the effects on the different segments of the distribution of Italy’s export prices, we run quantile regressions. We find that are mainly those products sold at low prices to face a strong pressure to upgrade.     

The PC Industry: New Economy or Early Life-Cycle?

The paper studies the co-evolution of industrial turbulence and financial volatility in the early phase of the life-cycle of an old high-tech industry and a new high-tech industry: the U.S. auto industry from 1899–1929 and the U.S. PC industry from 1974–2000. In both industries, the first three decades were characterized by industrial turbulence: radical technological change, high entry and exit rates, and rapidly falling prices. However, unlike in the auto industry, in the PC industry technological change and new entry did not lead to strong instability of market shares—at the core of the monopoly-destroying effect of Schumpeterian creative destruction—until the 1990s, when the lead of the incumbents from the pre-existing mainframe and minicomputer industries was undermined. In both industries, stock prices were the most volatile and idiosyncratic during those years in which technological change disrupted market shares the most (Autos: 1918–1928; PCs: 1990–2000). Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: L11, 030, G12.     

Reserve Prices without Commitment

When potential bidders in an auction have to incur a cost to prepare their bids and thus to learn their valuations, imposing a reserve price and announcing that in case no bid is submitted there will be another auction without a reserve price is both revenue and welfare improving. Reserve prices that induce less than maximum entry in the first auction may be optimal. Also, entry fees are not necessarily better instruments than reserve prices.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Number: D44.     

Bounding consumer surplus by monopoly profits

Regulatory agencies and other public authorities in the United States frequently require private firms seeking regulatory approvals to enter geographic markets, or offer products, that they would not otherwise provide. Examples include “build-out” rules for cable television franchisees, and universal service or “common carrier” obligations. The social welfare consequences of such policies are often difficult to evaluate because, among other things, consumer surpluses generated by entry must be assessed. This article shows that the level of (variable) monopoly profits in the markets of interest can be used to place an upper bound on the associated consumer surplus whenever demand vanishes at a sufficiently high price. This result, which is new, can then be used to evaluate the social consequences of forced entry. Our methods can also be used to provide a bound on the change in consumer surplus resulting from the imposition of regulated prices on an existing monopoly.      

Market size and entry in international trade: Product versus firm fixed costs

This paper develops a theoretical framework to infer the nature of fixed costs from the relationship between entry patterns in international markets and destination market size. If fixed costs are at the firm level, firms take advantage of an intrafirm spillover by expanding firm‐level product range (scope). Few firms enter with many products and dominate international trade. If fixed costs are at the product level, an interfirm spillover reduces the fixed costs to export for all firms producing the product. The resulting entry pattern consists of many firms exporting different varieties of the same product. Using cross‐country data on firm and product entry, I find empirical evidence consistent with product‐level costs. More firms than products enter in larger markets offering their consumers lower prices and a greater variety of goods within the product category.     

Entry (and exit) in a differentiated industry

The entry process in an industry embodying more or less close substitutes is considered. One examines whether the increase in the number of substitutes induces pure competition when prices are chosen noncooperatively. It is shown that these exists an upper bound on the number of firms which can compete in the market: when this upperbound is reached, any further entry entails the exit of an existing firm. In sprite of this fact, new entries imply the decrease of prices to the competitive ones.     

Experimentation in Markets

We present a model of entry and exit with Bayesian learning and price competition. A new product of initially unknown quality is introduced in the market, and purchases of the product yield information on its true quality. We assume that the performance of the new product is publicly observable. As agents learn from the experiments of others, informational externalities arise.
We determine the Markov Perfect Equilibrium prices and allocations. In a single market, the combination of the informational externalities among the buyers and the strategic pricing by the sellers results in excessive experimentation. If the new product is launched in many distinct markets, the path of sales converges to the efficient path in the limit as the number of markets grows.     

Non‐Negative Quantity Constraints and the Duration of Punishment

In an oligopoly supergame, firms face an obvious technological constraint: the positivity of their production quantities. Applicability of single‐period optimal punishment hinges critically upon the degree of supermodularity in the stage game, as well as upon the positivity constraints on prices and/or quantities. If both prices and quantities are constrained to be positive, then the relevant multi‐period punishment prescribes securitylevel payoffs (where individual rationality binds) when and only when the game is perfectly supermodular, i.e. is either a Bertrand supergame with perfect substitute products or a Cournot supergame with perfect complement products. JEL classification numbers: D43, L13, C72.     

中国网络购物的产业组织分析

网络购物作为一个新兴产业,近来的发展异常迅猛。基于产业组织理论,从市场结构、市场行为和市场绩效三个方面具体以B2C和C2C两个市场为对象进行分析。得出市场结构现属于寡头垄断型,市场进入壁垒不高,以低价行为进行市场渗透,以技术进步与创新促进发展。但整个产业仍尚未成熟,需要行业本身、政府以及社会各界的共同努力。     

The optimal pricing of computer software and other products with high switching costs

The paper studies the determinants of the optimum prices of computer programs and their upgrades. It is based on the notion that because of the human capital invested in the use of a computer program by its user, this product has high switching costs, and on the finding that pirates are responsible for generating over 80% of new software sales. A model to maximize the present value of the program to the program house is constructed to determine the optimal prices of initial programs and for those upgrading their programs. It is shown that an upward shift of the demand function of upgrades leads to an increase in the optimum price of upgrades and to a decline in that of initial copies. However, and upward shift of the demand function of initial copies increases their optimal price without affecting that of upgrades. The price of upgrades is higher, the smaller (greater) the absolute value of the derivative of the initial copy demand with respect to the upgrade price (its own price), the smaller the number of pirates purchasing their initial legitimate copies and, normally, the later they do it. The prices of these goods often move in opposite directions despite the fact that the goods can best be characterized as complements. Copy-protection is generally not optimal with standard programs having competing unprotected products, and it is normally optimal to use a drug pusher's strategy in pricing and in other respects: get the user hooked and cash in on the upgrades.     

Trends in Disaggregated Import and Export Prices in Europe: Implications for the Trade and Wages Debate

We consider carefully the evidence from traded prices (as proxied by unit values) concerning the transmission of the effects of globalisation to domestic labour markets. Using standard index number techniques we decompose changes in sectoral import and export unit values into movements due to changes in pure prices of the initial bundle of goods imported or exported and changes due to upgrading of that bundle. Looking at the imports of selected European countries of textiles, clothing and footwear relative to engineering products we find evidence of strongly falling pure prices of the unskilled intensive products relative to the skilled products in the 1980s. This reinforces the view that import prices can capture the impact of globalisation in terms of falling relative prices for products produced with the intensive use of unskilled labour. However, the trends are not common across all the unskilled sectors; footwear is clearly an exception. In the absence of detailed domestic data, we look for reactions by domestic firms to increased import competition in movements in the price and composition of exports. We find evidence of stiff price competition from imports being associated with similar movements in export prices and no support for the view that import competition from low–wage countries has led to upgrading of the quality of exports.     

Entry and pricing on Broadway

This article investigates the pricing decisions of Broadway shows. We find evidence that incumbent Broadway shows lower prices several weeks prior to the opening of a new show. In addition, prices are lower when the threat of competition, due to more entrants, is larger. A decomposition suggests that prices are more important than quantities for changes in revenue prior to entry and that this pattern reverses after entry occurs.     

Strategic Choice of the Price Structure and Entry Deterrence Under Price Cap Regulation

This paper shows that a price‐capped firm under the threat of entry in some of the markets it serves can strategically manipulate its price structure to deter entry. In doing so, the regulated firm uses the price cap constraint as a commitment device to an aggressive pricing behaviour in case of entry. A (dynamic) price cap generally entails that the prices allowed today are a function of the previous‐period prices and that the tighter is the constraint on each price, the larger is the quantity sold of this good in the previous period. Hence, the regulated firm may strategically choose its price structure before entry to place a tighter regulatory control on the prices set in the (potentially) competitive markets and to make it optimal to charge in these markets – in case of entry – prices so low that entry is unprofitable.     

A general-equilibrium model of a traditional Soviet-type economy

This paper presents an abstract, static model of a traditional Soviet-type economy, in which there are three kinds of agents (planners, firms, and consumers). A quantity-oriented incentive system for managers is described, as is a planners' allocation mechanism. There are technology-determined prices for producer goods and market prices for labor and consumer goods, which are sold by retail stores from which the planners collect a turnover tax. There are also profit and income taxes. A consumer-market equilibrium is shown to exist for each plan, and the results of simulations using fixed-point computation techniques are discussed. J. Comp. Econ., June 1977, 1(2), pp. 147–165. International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C.     

Price competition,free entry,and welfare in congested markets

In this paper we study the problem of price competition and free entry in congested markets. In particular, we consider a network with multiple origins and a common destination node, where each link is owned by a firm that sets prices in order to maximize profits, whereas users want to minimize the total cost they face, which is given by the congestion cost plus the prices set by firms. In this environment, we introduce the notion of Markovian Traffic Equilibrium to establish the existence and uniqueness of a pure strategy price equilibrium, without assuming that the demand functions are concave nor imposing particular functional forms for the latency functions. We derive explicit conditions to guarantee existence and uniqueness of equilibria. Given this existence and uniqueness result, we apply our framework to study entry decisions and welfare, and establish that in congested markets with free entry, the number of firms exceeds the social optimum.     

Does Auctioning of Entry Licences Induce Collusion? An Experimental Study

We use experiments to examine whether the auctioning of entry rights affects the behaviour of market entrants. Standard economic arguments suggest that the licence fee paid at the auction will not affect pricing since it constitutes a sunk cost. This argument is not uncontested though, and this paper puts it to an experimental test. Our results indicate that an auction of entry licences has a significant positive effect on average prices in oligopoly but not in monopoly. These results are consistent with the conjecture that entry fees induce players to take more risk in pursuit of higher expected profits. In oligopoly, entry fees increase the probability that the market entrants coordinate on a collusive price path. In monopoly, taking more risk does not make sense since average prices are already close to the profit-maximizing price.     

Industrial organization in a restructuring socialist economy: Evidence from Bulgaria

Using new data for all state and cooperatively-owned Bulgarian establishments and enterprises in 1988 and 1989 we portray key aspects of Bulgarian industrial organization. During 1988–89: state ownership became less dominant; there was an abrupt reversal in the twenty year trend towards bigger economic units; more than half of the largest firms were concentrated in certain sectors, notably engineering and construction; using official prices, only about 10% of enterprises made losses. These data and other new data for manufacturing products enable calculation of diverse measures of market structure as this may evolve under the policies introduced in 1991. Indices of market concentration typically show substantial concentration; usually about 50% of manufacturing output was produced in potentially competitive environments. While estimates of minimum efficient scale imply that MES does not constitute a significant barrier to entry for new competitors, the underdeveloped nature of the Bulgarian capital market probably greatly restricted entry.     

R&D,TECHNOLOGY SPILLOVERS AND STOCK PRICES†

Abstract. Theories of endogenous growth suggest that technological progress is driven by firms’ own R&D effort and knowledge spillovers. Using panel data for US firms over the period from 1990 to 1999 this paper tests the influence on stock prices of technological spillovers through firms’ purchase of intermediate products from other firms. The empirical results show that stock prices are significantly positively affected by knowledge spillovers through the input of intermediate products.