Search results for "Marginal cost"
showing 10 items of 27 documents
Inflation and optimal monetary policy in a model with firm heterogeneity and Bertrand competition
2018
Abstract We study the joint implications of heterogeneity of total factor productivity and strategic price interactions between firms on the dynamics of inflation and the design of optimal monetary policy. In this setting, more productive firms respond less to shocks affecting their marginal costs than less productive firms. As a consequence, economies with a larger proportion of highly productive firms face a flatter Phillips curve. Moreover, when these two features concur, the Ramsey problem gives rise to an optimal non-zero long run inflation that amplifies the differences in relative prices between more efficient and less efficient firms, thus increasing the market share of the former. …
Market Polarization and the Phillips Curve
2021
The Phillips curve has flattened out over the last decades. We develop a model that rationalizes this phenomenon as a result of the observed increase in polarization in many industries, a process along which a few top firms gain an increasing share of their industry market. In the model, firms compete a la Bertrand and there is exit and endogenous market entry, as well as optimal up and downgrading of technology. Firms with larger market shares find optimal to dampen the response of their price changes, thus cushioning the shocks to their marginal costs through endogenous countercyclical markups. Thus, regardless of its causes (technology, competition, barriers to entry, etc.), the recent i…
Rail access charges and internal competition in high speed trains
2016
Abstract This paper develops an ex ante analysis of the introduction of on-track competition in High Speed Rail (HSR) lines. The distinctive elements of our analysis are the consideration of: (i) the vertical structure of the rail sector, (ii) operators that compete in prices and number of services, and (iii) access charges for the use of the rail infrastructure that are endogenous. We provide simulation results for three Spanish HSR routes. The socio-economic viability of entry is found to depend on whether infrastructure and rail operations are integrated or separated, and also on the policy rule to set rail access charges. Firstly, separation without entry is not an appropriate good poli…
Evolution of Telecom Operator Software Industry: Conclusions and Future
2009
Analysis of software industry is a challenging task due to the inherent characteristics of software industry. This is not simply due to the immaterial nature of software, or to zero marginal cost of replicating software, nor it is due to knowledge intensiveness of the industry. Most software is vertical software and is developed for the purposes of some vertical industry, such as finance or telecom, whose business the software will support. The major challenge for analysing a vertical software industry comes from understanding the interaction of software technology and the business requirements of the vertical industry.
Allocating cost reducing investments over competing divisions
2007
This paper examines a three-stage model of divisionalization where, first, two parent firms create independent units, second, the parent firms allocate cost reduction levels over these units, and third, the resulting units compete in a Cournot market given their current costs of production. The introduction of the cost reduction phase is shown to reduce the incentives toward divisionalization severely, relative to other existing models. Namely, the scope for divisionalization in equilibrium reduces as the marginal cost of the cost reducing investment decreases, and eventually vanishes. A second-best welfare analysis shows that, for any given market structure, the equilibrium investment deci…
Strictly convex variable cost does not imply U-shaped average cost
2016
Abstract We show that strictly convex variable costs do not imply U-shaped average costs and provide a sufficient condition for U-shaped average costs. As an application we study endogenous entry when firms have market power and they have decreasing average cost but increasing marginal cost.
Trading activities, productivity and markups: Evidence for Spanish manufacturing
2019
This work analyses the firms’ internationalization strategies of importing intermediates and exporting output, and the potential rewards of these activities in terms of total factor productivity (TFP), as a proxy for marginal costs, and markups. It further deepens into the study of the relationship between internationalization strategies and markups by disentangling whether it operates through affecting firms’ marginal costs and/or firms’ prices. The panel database employed in this paper is the Spanish Survey on Business Strategies (ESEE) for the period 2006- 2014. Results in the paper distinguish between SMEs and large firms and indicate that there is high persistence in the performance of…
The calculation of shadow prices for industrial wastes using distance functions: An analysis for Spanish ceramic pavements firms
2001
Abstract This paper deals with the calculation of shadow prices for two industrial wastes generated on their production processes by 18 firms belonging to the Spanish ceramic pavements industry. These prices are then used to calculate an extended productivity index which takes into consideration wastes going with the production of marketable goods. We follow the methodological approach first proposed by Fare et al. (The Review of Economics and Statistics 75 (1993)). A negative correlation is found between absolute shadow prices and wastes production intensity, reflecting a greater marginal cost of eliminating wastes for those firms using less contaminant production processes. Differences be…
Drastic innovation reduces firms’ incentives to create divisions
2020
I study a game in which two firms create independent divisions, then they choose whether to do R&D so as to reduce their divisions’ marginal costs, and then the divisions compete in the market. I provide necessary and sufficient conditions under which the game has an equilibrium in pure strategies, and I show that the game has an equilibrium only if each firm threatens that if the rival creates more divisions it will use R&D to foreclose the market. The case we find in the literature, in which firms flood the market with their divisions, should happen only in industries with low returns to R&D.
Endogenous timing with infinitely many firms
2008
Abstract A model with constant marginal costs is considered where firms choose first a period for production and then the amount to produce when competing in the market according to the resulting timing decisions. Multiple equilibria arise allowing for infinitely many industry output configurations encompassing one limit-output dominant firm and the Cournot equilibrium with free entry as extreme cases. At each of these equilibria a firm produces a positive amount only if this firm commits to produce at period one. Both Stackelberg and Cournot-like outcomes are sustainable as equilibria however. When the number of leaders is given, production at subsequent periods is always prevented, and in…