Search results for "jel:D43"
showing 9 items of 9 documents
Multiproduct trading with a common agent under complete information: Existence and characterization of Nash equilibrium
2014
This paper focuses on oligopolistic markets in which indivisible goods are sold by multiproduct firms to a continuum of homogeneous buyers, with measure normalized to one, who have preferences over bundles of products. Our analysis contributes to the literature on private, delegated agency games with complete information, extending the insights by Chiesa and Denicolò (2009) to multiproduct markets with indivisibilities and where the agent's preferences need not be monotone. By analyzing a kind of extended contract schedules -mixed bundling prices- that discriminate on exclusivity, the paper shows that efficient equilibria always exist in such settings. There may also exist inefficient equil…
Multi-product firms and product variety
2008
The goal of this paper is to study the role of multi-product firms in the market provision of product variety. The analysis is conducted using the spokes model of non-localized competition proposed by Chen and Riordan (2007). Firstly, we show that multi-product firms are at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis single-product firms and can only emerge if economies of scope are sufficiently strong. Secondly, under duopoly product variety may be higher or lower with respect to both the first best and the monopolistically competitive equilibrium. However, within a relevant range of parameter values duopolists drastically restrict their product range in order to relax price competition, and as a…
Cross-country comparisons of competition and pricing power in European banking
2009
Abstract Studies of banking competition and competitive behavior both within and across countries typically utilise only one of the few measures that are available. In trying to assess the relative competitive position of banking markets in 14 European countries, existing indicators of competition are found to give conflicting predictions across countries, within countries, and over time. This is because indicators of competition tend to measure different things and are additionally influenced by cross-country differences in cost efficiency, fee income levels, real economic growth and inflation. We attempt to separate bank pricing power from these embodied influences and derive more consist…
Endogenous R&D Symmetry in Linear Duopoly with One-way Spillovers
2005
A duopoly model of cost reducing R&D-Cournot market competition is extended to encompass endogenous timing of R&D investments. Under the assumption that R&D spillovers are zero under simultaneous choices of R&D and only flow from the R&D leader to the follower under sequential choices, sequential and simultaneous play at the R&D stage are compared in order to assess the role of technological externalities in stimulating or attenuating endogenous firm asymmetry. The only timing structure of the R&D stage sustainable as subgame–perfect Nash equilibrium involves simultaneous play and thus zero spillovers.
R&D, Competition and Growth with Human Capital Accumulation Revisited
2012
In this paper, we have presented a generalization of Bucci's (2003) model in which have disentangled the monopolistic mark-up in the intermediate goods sector, the intermediate goods share in the final output and the returns to specialization in order to have a better measurement of competition. Indeed, unlike Bucci (2003), in our model, the measure of competition is completely independent of the intermediate goods share in the final output and the returns to specialization. Our main finding is that, unlike Bucci (2003), we show that the competition does not play any role in growth. This result is explained by the complementarity of innovation and human capital assumed in the research produ…
NASH EQUILIBRIA IN A MODEL OF MULTIPRODUCT PRICE COMPETITION: AN ASSIGNMENT PROBLEM
2003
We study the market interaction of a finite number of single-product firms and a representative buyer, where the buyer consumes bundles of these goods. The buyers' value function determines their willingness to pay for subsets of goods. We show that subgame perfect Nash-equilibrium outcomes are solutions of the linear relaxation of an integer programming assignment problem and that they always exits. The (subgame perfect) Nash-equilibrium price set is characterized by the Pareto frontier of the associated dual problem's projection on the firms' price vectors. We identify the Nash-equilibrium prices for monotonic buyers' value functions and, more importantly, we show that some central soluti…
Competing Against Simulated Equilibrium Price Dispersions: An Experiment on Internet-Assisted Search Markets
2005
In a four-treatment experiment, we test some of the hypotheses in García-Gallego et al. (2004) concerning competition among a number of firms of which some (or all) are indexed by a price-comparison engine facilitating buyers’ search process. In this paper, we isolate individual behavior from noise due to other players’ actions and learning, facing each subject with simulated rivals whose prices are extracted from mixed strategy equilibrium distributions. We find systematic deviations from both theoretical distributions and previous data obtained in sessions where all players were human. Specifically, departures of experimental data from the corresponding theoretical predictions are enhance…
Delegated agency in multiproduct oligopolies with indivisible goods
2010
This paper focuses on oligopolistic markets in which indivisible goods are sold by multiproduct firms to a continuum of homogeneous buyers, with measure normalized to one, who have preferences over bundles of products. Our analysis contributes to the literature on delegated agency games with direct externalities and complete information, extending the insights by Berheim and Whinston (1986, a , b) to markets with indivisibilities. By analyzing a kind of extended contract schedules - mixed bundling prices - that discriminate on exclusivity, the paper shows that efficient equilibria always exist in such settings. There may also exist inefficient equilibria in which the agent chooses a subopti…
Commitment and choice of partner in a negotiation with a deadline
2002
This paper analyses the effects of partially revocable endogenous commitments of a seller in a negotiation with a deadline. In particular, we examine when commitment is a source of strength, a source of inefficiency and when it does not affect the bargaining outcome at all. We show that when commitment possesses a minimum amount of irrevocability this crucially determines the bargaining outcome. In the bilateral bargaining case, commitment becomes a source of inefficiency since it causes a deadline effect. In the choice of partner framework, however, the deadline effect disappears and there is an immediate agreement and, moreover, commitment becomes a source of strength since it increases t…