Domestic entry, optimum-welfare and maximum-revenue tariffs

In this paper, we examine the ranking of the maximum-revenue tariff and the optimum-welfare tariff under a linear Cournot oligopoly model without and with free entry of domestic firms. We demonstrate that in a regulated entry oligopoly with asymmetric costs, when the marginal cost of the domestic firms exceeds a critical value, the maximum-revenue tariff is higher than the optimum-welfare tariff. We then show that under free entry of domestic firms with asymmetric costs, when the fixed cost gets larger and the domestic firms become fewer, the difference between the optimum-welfare tariff and the maximum-revenue tariff becomes larger.     

Foreign competition and optimal privatization with excess burden of taxation

We examine in a mixed oligopoly setting how foreign competition and the excess burden of taxation will affect privatization policy in the presence of strategic tax/subsidy policies. We show that in the presence of excess burden of taxation with foreign competitors, output subsidy coupled with import tariff and partial privatization is adopted to improve the social welfare. However, if the excess burden of taxation is relatively large, the government may switch to use production tax coupled with tariff policy and partial privatization to improve the social welfare.     

A study and implementation of business-to-business e-commerce with the OBI standard

Internet based e-commerce has flourished in the business-to-consumer world. The lack of well-accepted standards is hindering the success in providing business-to-business e-commerce solutions. Open Buying on the Internet, or OBI, standard is one of the recent efforts in bringing business-to-business e-commerce into corporate purchasing. OBI is a common standard, based on the existing industry standards, that guides trading partners in implementing interoperable purchasing systems on the Internet. In this paper, we present a field study project on how companies may use OBI. We also survey the additional desirable services expected from managers who may use OBI-based e-commerce systems. We then describe a prototype implementation to enable the OBI capability in the IBM Net.Commerce merchant server software. With our implementation, existing merchant servers can be easily augmented to adopt the OBI standard for business-to-business e-commerce. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Introduction

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking -