How firms compete when they set identical prices: Nonprice strategies in the Indian biscuit industry

How do firms compete when all firms in an industry set identical prices? Using Nielsen data on India's biscuit manufacturers, we document productivity-based competition on nonprice strategies under industry-wide uniform pricing. Products with one standard deviation higher quantity-based productivity contain, on average, 13% more quantity per pack for the same price. Productivity also positively correlates with promotions on pack size, availability, and variety. A higher price (per pack size) sensitivity in rural markets combined with industry-wide uniform pricing imposes a greater burden on rural consumers. Additional analyses show that firms can reduce this burden by selling different pack sizes in urban and rural areas.     

Asymmetric Patterns of Demand-Supply Mismatch in Real Estate

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - As expectations change, we may observe asymmetry in responses of economic agents over various phases of the economic cycles. In this paper, we...     

Virtual currencies: different schemes and research opportunities

Marketing Letters - The digitization of money has led to the emergence of numerous virtual currencies. Despite their great financial relevance, virtual currencies have not received much attention...     

Trust and trustworthiness after a land restitution program: lab-in-the-field evidence from Colombia

Constitutional Political Economy - We assess the impact on trust and trustworthiness of a governmental program to compensate victims of forced displacement. All our subjects were eligible to apply...