Prohibiting State Aid in an Integrated Market: Cournot and Bertrand Oligopolies with Differentiated Products

The prohibition of state aid in an integrated market such as the European Community is analyzed in a model where firms produce differentiated products and market structure is either Cournot or Bertrand oligopoly. State aid is financed by distortionary taxation so the opportunity cost of government revenue exceeds unity. Under both Cournot and Bertrand oligopoly, if products are sufficiently close substitutes then there exists a range of values for opportunity cost where governments give state aid and where the prohibition of state aid will increase aggregate welfare. With sufficiently differentiated products, the prohibition of state aid will reduce aggregate welfare.     

Goodwill and dynamic advertising strategies

In this paper, we empirically analyze weekly advertising policies of manufacturing firms in consumer goods markets. We assume firms engage in persuasive advertising, thus policies of firms affect the goodwill of a brand. We introduce a demand and a goodwill production function. A simple transformation of the demand function allows us to identify not only the demand parameters but also the parameters of the goodwill production function. We reconstruct the unobserved goodwill levels using these parameters and past advertising levels. We restrict our attention to Markov Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) strategies which are functions of payoff relevant state variables. Without imposing further restrictions on the dynamic competitive environment, we investigate the relationship between observed advertising strategies—which are assumed to be MPE—and payoff relevant state variables by means of several reduced form specifications. The most important determinant of advertising intensity turns out to be goodwill. We demonstrate that controlling for an advertising campaign significantly improves the explanatory power of the model. JEL Classification L13 . C73 . M30 . M37 I would like to thank Volkswagen Stiftung for the generous financial support which made this research possible.     

Estimating Discrete Joint Probability Distributions for Demographic Characteristics at the Store Level Given Store Level Marginal Distributions and a City-Wide Joint Distribution

This paper provides a solution to the problem of estimating a joint distribution using the associated marginal distributions and a related joint distribution. The particular application we have in mind is estimating joint distributions of demographic characteristics corresponding to market areas for individual retail stores. Marginal distributions are generally available at the census tract level, but joint distributions are only available for Metropolitan Statistical Areas which are generally much larger than the market for a single retail store. Joint distributions over demographics are an important input into mixed logit demand models for aggregate data. Market shares that vary systematically with demographics are essential for relieving the restrictions imposed by the Independence from Irrelevant Alternative property of the logit model.We approach this problem by formulating a parametric function that incorporates both the city-wide joint distributional information and marginal information specific to the retail stores market area. To estimate the function, we form moment conditions equating the moments of the parametric function to observed data, and we input these into a GMM objective. In one of our illustrations we use four marginal demographic distributions from each of eight stores in Dominicks Finer Foods data archive to estimate a four dimensional joint distribution for each store. Our results show that our GMM approach produces estimated joint distributions that differ substantially from the product of marginal distributions and emit marginals that closely match the observed marginal distributions. Mixed logit demand estimates are also presented which show the estimates to be sensitive to the formulation of the demographics distribution.The views expressed are not purported to reflect those of the United States Department of Justice     

关于新一轮国有企业改革的若干认识

以往的国有企业改革在取得成效的同时,产生了一些新的问题,国内外经济发展环境的变化也给国有企业的发展带来挑战,为更好地发挥国有经济的主导作用,深化国有企业改革势在必行。党的十八届三中全会对深化国有企业改革提出了系列要求,历经三十多年的国企改革进入了新的历史发展时期。新一轮国有企业改革应遵循的原则是,坚持社会主义基本经济制度,坚持市场化方向。改革路径主要包括积极发展混合所有制经济、放大国有资本功能;加强国有资本投资和运营公司建设、优化国有经济布局;继续完善公司治理结构、加快现代企业制度建设步伐等。     

Mixed Market Competition in a Quality Differentiated Duopoly Model An Approach to Banking Sector

This paper attempts to develop a theoretical framework to investigate the competitive implications of quality choices of financial institutions whereby they charge prices to consumers based on their willingness to pay for the service qualities in the mixed market scenario under vertical product differentiation model. Initially, it analyzes benchmark equilibrium solutions of monopoly and duopoly to establish the degree of quality differentiation between two private banks in an uncover market configuration. Further, it estimates the quality differentiation between private and public banks, and examines the interaction between two market structures keeping public bank as both leader and follower, and then measures the social welfare from different prospectives. The explicit operation of two stages Nash equilibrium game forecasted that public banks＇ monopoly seems to be still better than a private banking, and it is socially optimal. The outcome demonstrates a significant importance of vertical quality differentiation for policy implication in banking industry and provides an insight on the reasons of particular co-existence of public and private banking services in the specified location. In this context, it is concluded that the presence of public banks in banking industries is a crucial condition for obtaining the higher range of social welfare.     

我国资源衰退型城市“资源诅咒”的逆袭路径研究

我国资源衰退型城市经济增长乏力,在不同程度上陷入了"资源诅咒"困境,而成功地建立战略性新兴产业基地是破解"资源诅咒"的关键。目前,我国资源衰退型城市战略性新兴产业基地主要采用外生型和内生型发展模式,但两者的实践效果均不理想。依据我国资源衰退型城市的特点实施混合型发展模式,可以推动战略性新兴产业基地顺利地建成,以突破"资源诅咒"困境。     

煤炭工业混合所有制改革投资主体权益问题分析

对混合所有制的认识从偏向宏观走向侧重微观,体现了改革的深入和细化;产权理论和公司治理理论是思考混合所有制改革中投资主体权益问题的理论基础;从微观经济层面总结了煤炭工业企业所有制的变化历程;基于对理论、历史与现状的思考,分析了煤炭工业混合所有制改革中各方投资主体面临的权益问题,并提出了相应的解决对策。     

煤炭企业混合所有制改革产权制度初探

通过对我国42家煤炭上市公司的股权结构分析,发现32家国有煤炭上市公司国有股"一股独大"现象非常明显,10家非国有煤炭上市公司的股权虽然相当分散,但是并没有国有或公有制经济成分参与其中。为充分发挥混合所有制的高效率,建议国有煤炭企业将国有股比例降至40%左右,引进外资与民间资本比例至40%左右,设置20%左右的内部职工股。在国有煤炭企业进行混合所有制产权改革的过程中,可能会面临两个问题:一是企业经理层不按照市场规律经营企业,二是公有制产权主体与非公有制产权主体之间可能会产生冲突。     

国有煤炭企业发展混合所有制探讨

我国的煤炭企业中国有独资或国有控股企业占有很大比重,混合所有制发展不够充分,中共十八届三中全会再次强调了深化国有企业改革、发展混合所有制经济。如何深化国有煤炭企业改革,推进混合所有制经济,在市场的决定性作用中,加快国有煤炭企业转型发展,这是国有煤炭企业面临的重要课题。结合大同煤矿集团公司实际,就当前形势下国有煤炭企业发展混合所有制的必要性、发展混合所有制面临的障碍以及如何发展混合所有制等内容进行了剖析。