Spatial dispersion in cournot competition

This paper considers the spatial model used by Anderson and Neven (1991) to study firms' decisions on locations without restricting the consumers' reservation price. We note that the pattern of locations varies as the reservation price for a fixed transportation rate decreases. For a high enough reservation price, we find Anderson and Neven (1991)'s result where firms group at the center of the market and serve all consumers. As the reservation price falls, firms start to move away from each other, increasing the quantities shipped to the consumers close to their locations.     

The possibility of mixed-strategy equilibria with constant-returns-to-scale technology under Bertrand competition

Abstract. We analyze the Nash equilibria of a standard Bertrand model. We show that in addition to the marginal-cost pricing equilibrium there is a possibility for mixed-strategy equilibria yielding positive profit levels. We characterize these equilibria and find that having unbounded revenues is the necessary and sufficient condition for their existence. Hence, we demonstrate that under realistic assumptions the only equilibrium is marginal-cost pricing.     

Does a ‘non-committed’ government always generate lower social welfare than its ‘committed’ counterpart? Strategic trade policy when consumer surplus matters

We show that social welfare in the setup where the government lacks the full ability to commit to its trade policies may exceed the social welfare when the government possesses full commitment power if consumer surplus is part of the social welfare function. This is never the case in the standard, “third market” framework of strategic trade policy. We provide two examples in which consumer surplus matters: the “home market” and the “intra-industry trade” setup. The policy instruments under consideration are import tariffs and export subsidies and there are R&D spillovers from the domestic to the foreign firm.     

Cross-border rent shifting in international telecommunications

While scholars have questioned the merits of strategic trade policy, such policies have played a major role in international telecommunications. Countries have traditionally linked bilaterally their termination prices for international telephone calls. I show that this linkage can be rationalized as a mutually beneficial constraint on rent seeking. Linkage becomes more challenging to maintain with telecommunications liberalization, competition, and the growth of alternatives for terminating traffic. I consider possible policy approaches to such developments. Overall, this case study suggests that constraining cross-border rent shifting will present a major transitional challenge in international efforts to liberalize services.     

When does Learning by Doing generate current losses?

We study under which conditions a learning by doing effect in the industry causes a monopolist to operate at a loss for some initial periods. Those conditions involve a parameter of the learning process, the slope of inverse demand function and the discount parameter. In order to get results, we explore the analytical solution to a T-period learning by doing model, which is also a novelty. Numerical examples are presented.     

Reexamination of Strategic Public Policies

This paper attempts to reinterpret the familiar approach to strategic public policies from the viewpoint of inefficiencies involved in oligopoly where firms engage in Cournot competition. To this end, we introduce tools called “quasi‐reaction functions” and “quasi‐supply curves”. These tools allow us to conduct analyses through use of the standard partial‐equilibrium diagram, i.e. the quantity‐price plane. We can find the relationship between prices and quantities directly and, hence, deal with inefficiencies easily and also suggest policies to correct such inefficiencies. Specifically, we reexamine public policies related to mixed‐oligopoly, excess entry, technology choices with free entry and exit, and foreign oligopoly.     

STRATEGIC TRADE AND DELEGATED COMPETITION WITH ENDOGENOUS QUALITY CHOICE: IS EXPORT POLICY NEEDED?

This paper introduces the relative‐performance contract into a vertically differentiated product market and examines how the optimal trade policy and quality choice respond to the incentive mechanism. We find that the high quality firm makes better use of the delegation than the low quality firm in a cross‐border decentralized model. The main difference between the present paper and the strategic trade theory literature is that in this paper the optimal policy is free trade, which does not depend on whether firms compete by prices or quantities, and on whether the goods are substitutes or full complements.     

Growth, welfare and optimal trade taxes: a fallacy of composition

Optimal export taxation rules out the possibility of immiserizing growth in a two-country world. Thus, productivity increases in the exporting sector must be welfare improving. This paper shows that in a multicountry world such reasoning commits a fallacy of composition. Simultaneous growth of exporting nations can lead to welfare losses in the presence of unilaterally optimal export taxes. Also, optimal export taxes can decline in response to such growth. This result further strengthens the possibility of perverse welfare movements. Thus, standard policy recommendations of increasing productivity in the exporting sector may lead to unintended and self-defeating outcomes.     

The trade paradox persists under excise taxes

Brander and Krugman (1983) and Sertel (1988) followed by Krugman (1989), showed two sides of a ‘trade paradox’: The paradox in competition, viz. that opening trade (or increasing competition) may cause welfare to decline, and the paradox in efficiency, viz. that an increase in unit transport cost may increase welfare. In this paper, we consider the situation in an environment where interventionist trade policies are not permitted but each country is sovereign to impose an excise tax (or subsidy). The paradoxes persist under equilibrium excise taxes, reckoned both at the non-cooperative (Nash or dominant strategy) equilibrium and at the cooperative solution among tax-imposing authorities maximizing welfare. We also see that the paradoxes persist in a taxless environment where market equilibrium is Stackelberg rather than Cournot.     

THE EVOLUTION OF SPATIAL ECONOMICS: FROM THÜNEN TO THE NEW ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

This paper presents a review of the evolution of spatial economics over the past two centuries. The focus is on the evolution of what I consider to be the most fundamental theory of spatial economics, i.e., general location theory . The paper starts with a review of Thünen (1826 ), and ends with a review of the New Economic Geography initiated by Paul Krugman in the early 1990s. It is shown that the study of general location theory has been successful at shedding light on many important features of actual spatial economies.     

Some recent developments in capital market theory: A survey

This paper surveys some recent developments in the theory of capital markets. Particular emphasis is given to two strands of the literature. The first covers some recent and fundamental extensions to the theory of risk aversion and the demand for risky assets. These papers are concerned with the effect of non-hedgeable background risk on risk attitudes. The important implications for finance are for the size of the risk premium (the equity premium puzzle) and for the demand for and pricing of contingent claims. For example, background risk may help to explain the apparent over-pricing of options on equity indices. The second topic is interest rate term structure models. Stochastic term structure models try to capture the possible future shapes of the term structure of interest rates. This is relevant for the pricing of contingent claims, in particular for the pricing of interest rate derivatives such as American-style swaptions. The paper will survey the most important recent models in the literature, each of which satisfies the fundamental no-arbitrage property. It will discuss the implications of the models for the pricing of both European-style and American-style options.     

Unemployment and inflation persistence in Spain: Are there Phillips trade-offs?

This paper studies the dynamic behavior of inflation and unemployment in Spain during the period 1964–1997. In particular, we analyze the implications of high persistence in both unemployment and inflation dynamics for inference regarding the size of Phillips trade-offs and sacrifice ratios in the Spanish economy, in response to a demand shock. To do so we use a Stuctural VAR approach with several identification outlines which give rise to alternative interpretations of the joint unemployment-inflation dynamics. When using a bivariate VAR we cannot reject the existence of a permanent output loss of one-half of one percentage point for each percentage point of permanent disinflation. However, when the VAR is augmented with a third variable, in order to disentangle monetary from non-monetary shocks within the demand class, the evidence favours a lower and marginally permanent trade-off with an output loss of about one-fourth of one percentage point.     

On tariff and quality innovation in a market with discrete preferences

In a market for a quality-differentiated good with heterogeneous set of consumers and a local firm facing competitive imports from abroad, we examine private and social incentives for quality innovation. For differential tariff regime, we show that both the private and social gains increase with the tariff protection for the low-quality segment of the domestic market for any given tariff on high-quality imports. But for some very high costs of innovation, the local firm may not undertake a socially desirable innovation. The pro-competitive effect, on the other hand, ensures that quality-distortion-at-the-bottom occurs only for very high levels of tariffs.     

Welfare effects of competitive lobbying efforts in international oligopoly markets

Conventionally, rent-seeking activities have been considered to deteriorate social welfare and to distort resource allocation. This paper examines whether rent-seeking behavior can improve social welfare by focusing on the welfare effects of firms’ competitive lobbying efforts when governments can impose market entry regulation against foreign firms. We demonstrate that competitive lobbying efforts can improve social welfare when such lobbying efforts are directed to reduce market entry barriers. In addition, social welfare can be maximized when the government shows the maximum sensitivity to the foreign firm's political contributions while maintaining competitive market structure. Moreover, it is shown that the dominant strategy for a domestic firm is to allocate more resources to R&D sectors while it is optimal for foreign firms is to exert more efforts in lobbying to reduce the market entry barriers when a government makes political economic approach in market entry regulations.     

A note on quantitative trade restrictions, income effects and wage inequality

This paper examines the effects of conversion of one type of physical trade restrictions into another on the intra-country wage inequality in a standard 2 × 2 × 2 Heckscher–Ohlin–Samuelson model. It shows that a conversion of an import-quota into an equivalent voluntary export restraint raises wage-inequality in the country importing the unskilled-labor intensive good and lowers the wage-inequality in its trading partner. This result does not depend on whether the unskilled-labor intensive good or the skilled-labor intensive good was initially subject to an import quota. Conversion of the import-quota into an equivalent import tariff, on the other hand, may lead to a rise in wage inequality in both countries. The driving force behind these results is the real income effect that conversion of one type trade restriction instrument into another results in.     

The trade balance and the terms of trade in a two-country two-sector OLG economy

We consider a two-country, two-sector OLG model. It is shown that the trade balance and the relative price of exports are always positively related when exports are labor intensive regardless of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution in consumption. A large response of savings to future prices becomes a sufficient condition for an inverse relation between these variables only if exports are capital intensive. In this case, a rise in the terms of trade can be followed by a trade balance decline if consumption goods are capital intensive and the income effect implied on savings is negative and large.     

Environmental taxes and strategic delegation

This paper analyzes a managerial delegation model in which the government chooses an environmental tax to control environmental damage. By giving the managers of firms an incentive scheme based on a linear combination of profit and sales revenue, we show that firm owners have to pay a higher environmental tax and both environmental damage and social welfare increase compared to the profit-maximization case. Financial support from UPV (Subvención a grupos, 2001), UPV (HB-8238/2000) and MEC (BEC 2000-0301) is gratefully acknowledged. We would like to thank A. Saracho and two referees for helpful comments. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Forward contracts and competition

This paper examines the strategic use of forward contracts in an industry where downstream firms must buy an essential input from imperfectly competitive upstream suppliers. When a single large firm and a fringe of firms exist downstream, the large firm buys forward contracts from the fringe, i.e. there is horizontal subcontracting from the large firm to the firms on the fringe, in order to make the spot market less competitive. Hence our paper argues that horizontal subcontracting becomes an anti-competitive device. We also compare the strategies of buying forward contracts and purchasing productive capacity and we find that both are equivalent tools. When the downstream industry has instead several large firms, they have a “horizontal” incentive to sell forward contracts in order to gain market share, but the former “vertical” incentive to buy them persists. In this case, forward contracting may then lead to less competition in the spot market. We are indebted to Ramon Faulí-Oller, José Manuel Ordó?ez and Juan Carlos Reboredo for their helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft. We also gratefully acknowledge the valuable observations made by two anonymous referees and a Co-Editor that led to substantial improvements. Of course, the usual disclaimer applies. Antelo acknowledges financial support from the Xunta de Galicia (Grant PGIDIT02PXIA20101PR) and Bru that from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología (Grant PB98-1402).