Search results for "microeconomics"

SHARING THE BENEFITS OF COOPERATION IN HIGH SEAS FISHERIES: A CHARACTERISTIC FUNCTION GAME APPROACH

1998

Childhood Adversities and Adult Headache in Poland and Germany.

2015

Objective Various childhood adversities have been found to be associated with chronic pain in adulthood. However, associations were moderate in most studies, i.e. odds ratios (OR) were between one and two. Method An internet survey was performed in 508 Polish and 500 German subjects. A total of 19 childhood adversities were selected and their associations with headaches explored. Age, gender and country were included as potential confounders, as well as their two-way interaction with the risk factors. Results Two strong risk factors were identified. (1) A combined score for physical and emotional neglect showed an odds ratio (OR) of 2.78 (p < .002) to the frequency of headache in adulthood …

Collective and Cooperative Behaviour Models

2016

International audience; In modelling residential choice we cannot escape the debate about the effect of societal context on an individual’s decision-making. This debate depends on whether we set more store by the aggregate scale of society or by the individual’s decision-making. An individual-centred approach will focus on the particularities of an individual and the way her past, for example, influences her decisions.

BARGAINING WITH COMMITMENT UNDER AN UNCERTAIN DEADLINE

2006

We consider an infinite horizon bargaining game in which a deadline can arise with positive probability and where players possess an endogenous commitment device. We show that for any truncation of the game, the equilibrium agreement can only take place if the deadline arises within this finite horizon. Since the deadline is an uncertain event, the equilibrium exhibits agreements which are delayed with positive probability.

Empirical Evidence on the Relationship between Mobile Termination Rates and Firms' Profits

2015

The theoretical literature on mobile termination rates (MTRs) is inconclusive on how the level of MTRs affects overall consumer charges and firms' profits. We show that when firms offer bundles with fixed included usage – a tariff structure that has become more common in recent years – an identical change in all MTRs does not affect firms' retail prices or profits. We use a panel dataset from saturated European markets to estimate the effect of MTRs on mobile operators' profits. As predicted by the theoretical model, we cannot reject the fact that firms' profits are unaffected by an identical change in all MTRs.

Contests with size effects

2006

In this paper we analyze the structure of contest equilibria with a variable number of individuals. First we analyze a situation where the total prize depends on the number of agents and where every single agent faces opportunity costs of investing in the contest. Second we analyze a situation where the agents face a trade-off between productive and appropriative investments. Here, the number of agents may also influence the productivity of productive investments. It turns out that both types of contests may lead to opposing results concerning the optimal number of individuals depending on the strength of size effects. Whereas in the former case individual utility is u-shaped when the numbe…

BASIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN VERTICAL MARKETS*

2012

This paper considers the role of basic research and development (R&D) investment in vertical markets in which an incumbent owner of a basic technological input faces potential competition. We identify the conditions under which the socially optimal investment in basic research involves entry by new firms. Our main insight is that there is a role for public investment in R&D that appears to have been overlooked in the existing literature. This role draws on the idea that basic R&D adds to the credibility of the threat of the potential development of alternative technologies by reducing their implementation costs.

Spatial Competition in Quality

2011

We develop a model of vertical innovation in which firms incur a market entry cost and position themselves in the quality space. Once established, firms compete monopolistically, selling to consumers with heterogeneous tastes for quality. We establish the general existence and conditional uniqueness of the pricing game in such vertically differentiated markets with a potentially large number of active firms. Turning to firms’ entry decisions, exogenously growing productivities induce firms to enter the market sequentially at the top end of the quality spectrum. We spell out the conditions under which the entry problem is replicated over time so that each new entrant improves incumbent quali…

EXPLANATORY FACTORS OF MARKET POWER IN THE BANKING SYSTEM

2007

The aim of the study is to analyse the explanatory factors of market power in the banking system. Using as laboratory the Spanish banking system in the period 1986–2002, results show an increase of market power from the mid-1990s. Of the set of variables that the model posits as explaining market power, those with the greatest explanatory power are size, efficiency and specialization; concentration is not significant. This last result shows the limitations of the approaches, studies and decision-making rules of economic policy that uses market concentration as a proxy for the degree of competition.

Upward and Downward Limit Pricing: The Role of Post-Entry Competition

2005

Under asymmetric information, entry-deterring strategies by an incumbent monopolist can consist of deviations from its static monopoly price through downward deviations termed downward limit pricing, or upward deviations termed upward limit pricing. Our analysis shows that the mode of post-entry competition influences the range of situations in which an incumbent adopts a strategy of downward limit pricing instead of an upward one: this range is greater under price than under output competition; it is decreasing in the degree of product differentiation; and with homogeneous product only downward limit pricing emerges under price competition, while upward limit pricing can still take place w…