Regulating prices for shifting between service providers

The price that a regulated access provider charges for shifting customers between service providers has significant welfare implications. Typical regulatory approaches to pricing, such as pricing based on fully allocated cost or incremental cost, ignore the characteristics of consumer demand. A theoretical alternative, Ramsey pricing, considers only the elasticity of demand for given products. This paper directs attention to the competitive process. Using US long-distance telephone services as an example, this paper shows how empirical evidence concerning customer acquisition costs, customer switching costs, and churn among service providers can help to inform price regulation.     

Using the economics of platforms to understand the broadband-based market formation in the New Zealand Ultra-Fast Broadband Network

The government of New Zealand is currently building a nation-wide fibre-optics network, a project known as the Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative. The UFB network will cover 75 percent of New Zealanders over 10 years and will cost NZD $1.5 billion to the New Zealand government. The technical and economic characteristics of the new network will have a deep impact on the current landscape of the telecommunications markets. Institutional arrangements are in place for the development of the New Zealand's UFB: a government-owned agency, Crown Fibre Holdings (CFH); private investors who jointly with CFH own the Local Fibre Companies (LFCs) which will operate the UFB; and Retail Service Providers (RSP) that will provide end-user services by purchasing wholesale services to the LFCs. Relying on a normative economics approach that uses recent advances in the theory of platform-based markets with cross-network effects – also known as theory of two-sided platforms – the paper proposes a novel view of the way markets over the UFB will unfold. On one hand, the theory is used to explain the rationale behind regulatory decisions already made and their effect on the development of UFB-based markets for contents and services. Such analysis is followed, on the other hand, by the introduction of a simple taxonomy for the RSPs which provides the framework to argue about the most likely scenarios for service deployment and competition to develop over the UFB. The analytical framework reveals that the UFB ecosystem will be fraught with cross-network externalities which are the basis for regulatory decisions already adopted and the source of particular forms of strategic behavior adopted by the UFB-based market innovators.     

The critical discount factor as a measure for cartel stability?

This paper considers the stability of tacit collusion in price setting duopolies with repeated interaction. The minimum discount factor above which tacit collusion can be sustained in a subgame perfect equilibrium is called the critical discount factor δ*. In addition, δ* is often used as an intuitive measure for the stability of a tacit cartel, assuming that a collusive equilibrium is more difficult to sustain when δ* increases. However, according to standard theory the distance δ − δ* between the actual and the critical discount factor does not matter for stability as long as δ > δ*. This paper contributes experimental evidence that supports the intuitive idea that a larger critical discount factor makes collusion a less likely outcome.      

投资者异质性与证券市场定价——理论模型与中国的经验证据

本文从投资者异质性的客观现实出发,通过对投资者二维视角的交叉分类与相关行为的探讨,提出了一种按交易特点与行为依据的新的分类方案,即将投资者分为套利交易者、价格预期交易者和量能变动交易者三类。在此基础上分别建立了各类投资者的需求函数,通过对证券市场供求函数的讨论,利用均衡分析方法构建了基于投资者异质性的证券市场定价模型,并以我国证券市场1999-2011年的月度数据为样本进行了实证分析。实证结果表明:我国证券市场价格主要由价格预期交易者的诱导性策略行为与量能变动交易者的羊群行为决定,套利交易者的套利行为对市场价格没有显著的影响,证券市场扩容也未对市场价格的形成产生系统性冲击。     

Macro-economic determinants of consumer price knowledge: A meta-analysis of four decades of research

For the past four decades, dozens of researchers have studied consumer price knowledge, often with disagreements on the extent of consumer' ignorance about prices. While some of these disagreements have been attributed to research design variations among studies, no inquiry has yet been made on the role of the economic environment on consumer price knowledge. Nevertheless, environmental factors such as interest rates, unemployment, and economic growth may significantly influence consumers' knowledge of prices. Certain economic environments may therefore provide marketers with the ability to utilize pricing tactics which rely on limitations in consumers' knowledge of product prices. Using a meta-analytic framework, this paper synthesizes the results of 297 previous price knowledge studies to document the effects of inflation, unemployment, GDP growth, interest rates, country of study, and passage of time on consumer price knowledge. The meta-analysis results demonstrate that economic factors have considerable influence on explaining variations in consumer price knowledge. Managerial and public policy implications of the findings in light of turbulent economic environments are discussed.     

我国货币政策传导机制有效性研究:条件与结论

对几种货币政策传导机制的利用是否有效,取决于市场失衡的程度与开放的程度以及经济发展不同时期的机遇。目前我国新兴市场资金流动与各市场间的联系主要受资产价格传导机制作用的引导,而不是利率传导。人民币升值带来的机遇并非仅发生在商品市场,更发生在资本市场,汇率传导机制的作用虽然影响了出口,但是目前却更有利于资本输出下的海外收购与兼并,从而降低了通货膨胀传递下商品市场的投资成本。     

Grain price stabilization in India: Evaluation of policy alternatives

Stabilization of prices is an important element of food policy in India as in most other countries — both developing and eveloped. However, since the magnitude of grain stocks held for this purpose as well as the costs of physical storage have become prohibitively high, there is now a need for finding cost-effective alternatives including non interventionist and market-oriented methods for price stabilization. In this paper we consider the case of rice and wheat which are staple foodgrains in India. We make a comparison between alternative price stabilization policies including that of holding buffer stocks in terms of their impact on domestic price stability, producer and consumer welfare and government costs. A multi-market equilibrium framework is used where private storage, consumption, supply and prices of rice and wheat are determined simultaneously. Indian exports and imports are assumed to affect world prices. The alternative price stabilizing mechanisms are ranked according to both the criteria, welfare and price stability achieved. The main findings are as follows. The ranking of alternatives varies with the criterion used. Greater price stability need not necessarily imply greater welfare. The option of variable levies on private external trade turns out to be the most inexpensive and that of domestic buffer stocks the costliest in achieving price stability. Further, the efficacy of buffer stocks and subsidy to private storage in stabilizing prices is lower under free trade as compared to the case where the economy is closed to private external trade.     

Welfare effects of bubbles in an endogenous growth model

This paper examines welfare effects of asset bubbles in an endogenous growth model with overlapping generations. In our model, a steady-state equilibrium with bubbles exists only if the presence of bubbles raises the welfare level of the initial generation. Bubbles can be beneficial to generations born at relatively early dates, whereas they reduce the welfare level of sufficiently distant future generations. Increasing the rate of supply of the useless asset improves the lifetime utilities of future generations.     

New Political Economy

Alberto Alesina and Nouriel Roubini with Gerald D. Cohen, Political Cycles and the Macroeconomy
Avinash K. Dixit, The Making of Economic Policy: A Transaction-Cost Politics Perspective.
Gordon Pepper, Inside Thatcher's Monetarist Revolution