Search results for "microeconomics"
showing 10 items of 442 documents
Design of Public Procurement Auctions: Evidence from Cleaning Contracts
2018
We analyze a regime change from beauty contests to first-price sealed-bid and scoring auctions, using Swedish data on public procurement of cleaning services. In beauty contests, the lowest bid often lost, leaving substantial money on the table. The procurement costs were similar before and after the regime change: (i) Entry strongly decreases the procurement cost but did not change. Entry would have decreased had the municipalities not adjusted the objects of auctions. (ii) Municipalities favored in-house suppliers in the old regime, leading to more aggressive bidding by others. With favoritism reduced, these changes balanced each other out. Peer reviewed
Shilling, Squeezing, Sniping. A further explanation for late bidding in online second-price auctions
2021
Abstract Several studies provide empirical evidence for sniping (i.e., waiting until the last few seconds to bid) in second-price internet auctions, particularly in auctions at eBay . This evidence was regarded as puzzling and an anomaly for an extended period: How could sniping be consistent with rational behaviour in second-price auctions, where theory predicts that bids’ timing plays no role and there is no incentive to bid less than one’s private value. An essential contribution to this puzzling issue has been the insight by Bose and Daripa (2017) that late bidding is itself a response to the shilling. Their paper explains well late bidding for repeating auctions. However, late bidding …
Are Low Prices Compromises Collusion Guarantees? An Experimental Analysis of Price Matching Policies
2001
In this paper we experimentally test the ability of Price-Matching Guarantees (PMG) to rise prices above the competitive level. We implement three different treatments of symmetric duopolies to check the effect of PMG both as a market institution and as a business strategy. In the absence of any low-price guarantee, prices get close to the Bertrand-Nash equilibrium although in the 50 rounds of the experiment no full convergence is obtained. The existence of PMG as an institution in a market where firms decide only about prices results in a clear collusive outcome as all markets quickly and fully converge to the collusive prediction. If we allow subjects to decide whether they adopt price ma…
Unbeatable Value Low-Price Guarantee: Collusive Mechanism or Advertising Strategy?
2006
This paper investigates the effects of a low-price guarantee (price-beating guarantee) on the patterns of price setting of three supermarkets using micro-level price data. Following recent theoretical developments, the paper analyzes the ability of low-price guarantees to sustain anticompetitive prices. My empirical analysis suggests instead that this low-price guarantee may serve as an advertising device to signal low prices. The supermarket offering the low-price guarantee, aware of its price advantage in a subset of products, uses it to signal low prices to induce consumers to switch supermarkets.
Profit Margin Ratio, Markup, Profit Margin Per Unit, Economic Profit, and Profitability as Objectives for the Firm: An Economic Point-of-View
2015
We study five operational objectives for the firm: three marketing objectives (maximizing profit-margin ratio, maximizing markup, and maximizing profit-margin-per-unit), and two financial objective (maximizing economic profit (i.e., EVA) and maximizing profitability), as alternatives to the scholarly objective of maximizing profit. We prove that (i) Sales are lowest for profit-margin-per-unit, intermediate for profit-margin ratio and markup, and highest for profit maximization. Input consumption, including labor, is lower. Prices are in the reverse order. In terms of profit, profit-margin ratio, markup, and profit-margin-per-unit are necessarily less efficient than the classical profit maxi…
Participation Costs and Inefficiency in Takeover Contests
2010
We consider a takeover in which risk neutral bidders incur private costs to participate to the auction. Supposing that valuations for target firm are common knowledge, we study the optimal strategy of bidders and analyze the takeover result when they get or not toeholds in the target firm. We found that bidder's decision of participation is endogenous. By analyzing bidder's condition of participation, we found that the probability that the potential bidder with the highest valuation will not participate to the control, exists. We show that this probability increases with the size of toeholds possessed by the bidder with low valuation. Nevertheless, the size of toeholds possessed by the bidd…
Multiple Motivations Consequences on Bidder's Optimal Strategy in Takeover Contests
2011
This paper examines the optimal bidding strategy in takeover contests for a target firm, and the positive correlation between the bidders’ valuation. We consider risk neutral bidders who compete for the control of a target firm in which they get initial shareholdings. The bidder valuation for target firm is correlated with his motivations which determine the bidder’s strategy. We study bidder’s optimal strategy in mixed motivations setting. Since motivations are numerous, hypothesis of affiliated value in auctions allows to study bidder’s strategy. The paper shows that the impact of affiliation degree on bidder’s optimal strategy depends on their private signal and on the ratio between thei…
Retail pricing decisions and product category competitive structure
2010
This study addresses the use of demand forecasting techniques by retailers to support their decision making. Specifically, the authors propose a pricing decision support model for retailers to estimate optimal prices, whose output depends on the configuration of a supporting measurement model. The measurement model is a demand function that relates sales and prices within the category; optimal prices are those whose effects on demand and retail margins maximize the category's profitability. This investigation focuses particularly on the role of competitive structure, such that the authors consider two types of price competition asymmetries for demand forecasting: those depending on the bran…
Who are maximizers? Future oriented and highly numerate individuals
2015
Two studies investigated cognitive mechanisms that may be associated with people's tendency to maximize. Maximizers are individuals who are spending a great amount of effort in order to find the very best option in a decision situation, rather than stopping the decision process when they encounter a satisfying option. These studies show that maximizers are more future oriented than other people, which may motivate them to invest the extra energy into optimal choices. Maximizers also have higher numerical skills, possibly facilitating the cognitive processes involved with decision trade-offs.
The Best Hedging Strategy in the Presence of Transaction Costs
2009
Considerable theoretical work has been devoted to the problem of option pricing and hedging with transaction costs. A variety of methods have been suggested and are currently being used for dynamic hedging of options in the presence of transaction costs. However, very little was done on the subject of an empirical comparison of different methods for option hedging with transaction costs. In a few existing studies the different methods are compared by studying their empirical performances in hedging only a plain-vanilla short call option. The reader is tempted to assume that the ranking of the different methods for hedging any kind of option remains the same as that for a vanilla call. The …