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on Industrial Competition |
| By: | Simon Martin; Hans-Theo Normann; Paul Püplichhuisen; Tobias Werner |
| Abstract: | We study the propensity of independent algorithms to collude in repeated Cournot duopoly games. Specifically, we investigate the predictive power of different oligopoly and bargaining solutions regarding the effect of asymmetry between firms. We find that both consumers and firms can benefit from asymmetry. Algorithms produce more competitive outcomes when firms are symmetric, but less when they are very asymmetric. Although the static Nash equilibrium underestimates the effect on total quantity and overestimates the effect on profits, it delivers surprisingly accurate predictions in terms of total welfare. The best description of our results is provided by the equal relative gains solution. In particular, we find algorithms to agree on profits that are on or close to the Pareto frontier for all degrees of asymmetry. Our results suggest that the common belief that symmetric industries are more prone to collusion may no longer hold when algorithms increasingly drive managerial decisions. |
| Keywords: | algorithmic collusion, Cournot duopoly, asymmetric firms |
| JEL: | C73 D43 L13 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11629 |
| By: | Luke Garrod; Ruochen Li; Antonio Russo; Chris M. Wilson |
| Abstract: | There is limited theoretical understanding of cost pass-through within markets where prices are dispersed. Under a general demand function, we analyse the effects of cost changes in a seminal model of price dispersion, where some consumers are captive to particular sellers while others are not (Varian, 1980). To study pass-through in this mixed-strategy context, we employ a novel approach that links well to the pass-through literature in pure-strategy settings. Following an industry-wide cost increase, we show how the magnitudes of price rises faced by different consumer types, as well as the wider effects on price dispersion, depend upon whether demand is log-concave or log-convex. Furthermore, we examine whether the burden of the cost increase is expected to fall more heavily on captive or non-captive consumers. Finally, we show how our results vary with the level of competition and analyse the relationship between pass-through and demand shocks under price dispersion. |
| Keywords: | cost pass-through, price dispersion, demand curvature, competition, demand shocks |
| JEL: | D43 L13 D83 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11635 |
| By: | Caldarola, Bernardo (Mt Economic Research Inst on Innov/Techn, RS: GSBE other - not theme-related research); Fontanelli, Luca |
| Abstract: | Recent empirical evidence finds positive associations between digitalisation and industry concentration. However, ICT may not be all alike. We investigate the effect of the purchase of cloud services on the long run size growth rate of French firms. Our findings suggest that cloud services positively impact firm growth rates, with smaller firms experiencing more significant benefits compared to larger firms. This evidence suggests that the diffusion of cloud technologies may help mitigate concentration in the era of the digital transition by favouring the digitalisation and growth of smaller firms, especially when the cloud services provided are more advanced. |
| JEL: | L20 L25 O33 |
| Date: | 2024–09–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unm:unumer:2024026 |
| By: | Hui Liu; Yao Luo |
| Abstract: | We observe nominal price rigidity in tobacco markets across China. The monopolistic seller responds by adjusting product assortments, which remain unobserved by the analyst. We develop and estimate a logit demand model that incorporates assortment discrimination and nominal price rigidity. We find that consumers are significantly more responsive to price changes than conventional models predict. Simulated tax increases reveal that neglecting the role of endogenous assortments results in underestimations of the decline in higher-tier product sales, incorrect directional predictions of lower-tier product sales, and overestimation of tax revenue by more than 50%. Finally, we extend our methodology to settings with competition and random coefficient models. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2501.17251 |
| By: | Sergey Kokovin; Alina Ozhegova; Shamil Sharapudinov; Alexander Tarasov; Filipp Ushchev |
| Abstract: | Our novel approach to modeling monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms and consumers involves spatial product differentiation, in either a geographical space or a space of characteristics. In addition to price, each firm chooses location in space. We formulate conditions for positive sorting—more-productive firms serve larger market segments and face tougher competition—and for existence and uniqueness of equilibrium. To quantify the role of sorting, we calibrate the model using haircut market data and perform counterfactual analysis. Inequality in gains among consumers caused by positive market shocks can be substantial: gains for consumers at more-populated locations are three to four times higher. (JEL D11, D24, D43, L13, L84) |
| Date: | 2024–05–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/387736 |
| By: | Anastasia Bruni (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei and Catholic University of Sacred Heart) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the effect of green investments on market power. I measure the market power as markup following the method provided in De Loecker and Warzynski (2012). For green investments, I consider specifically the investments of firms in energy efficient technologies, both as the binary variable and as the continuous variable. This allows the examination of how the presence of such investments as well as their intensity affect markups. I use firm, age, year, sector and country fixed effects with a representative sample of indicatively 12, 000 firms from the European Investment Bank Investment Survey (EIBIS) in the panel from 2016 to 2022. I find the positive and statistically significant relationship that holds also when applying the 2SLS-IV methodology. This study is particularly relevant for firms that are willing to increase their market power and to improve their environmentally friendly image in the eyes of their customers without the need of engaging in greenwashing practices. Instead, the firms are invited to consider energy efficiency investments as a concrete way of improving both their markups and the loyalty of their customers. |
| Keywords: | green investment, markup, market power, instrumental variable |
| JEL: | Q56 L11 D22 C36 O13 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2025.05 |
| By: | de Brauw, Alan; Maruyama, Eduardo; Wagner, Julia |
| Abstract: | A common narrative about agri-food value chains (AVCs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is that smallholders are paid substantially less for their agricultural products relative to the prices consumers pay for them. Some of that difference can be attributed to market channels—even in competitive and efficient agricultural markets, there are costs involved as agricultural products move from producers to consumers, including expenses for transportation, collection and aggregation, grading, processing, distribution, packaging, and retailing. |
| Keywords: | markets; agrifood systems; value chains; agricultural value chains |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpr:cgiarp:168165 |
| By: | Seiya Hirano |
| Abstract: | In the adoption decisions of network goods, coordination problems lead to multiple equilibria. While consumers coordination significantly impacts the firm's pricing strategies, the precise relationship between coordination behavior and optimal pricing has received little attention. This paper analyzes optimal pricing strategies for network goods under different forms of consumer coordination in a two-period model with strategic consumers. We introduce two novel coordination criteria: risk dominance and threshold coordination. Risk dominance coordination accounts for the risk premium of no-adoption and threshold coordination accounts for consumer heterogeneity in the adoption of the good. We show that under the risk dominance criterion, the firm sets a lower price in period 1 when the risk of the coordination failure is high, but sets a higher price in period 1 when the risk is low. Under threshold coordination, the firm sets a lower price in period 1 when consumers hold pessimistic beliefs about the network size and sets a higher price in period 1 when beliefs are optimistic. Our findings highlight the critical implications of consumer coordination for firms' pricing strategies. |
| Date: | 2024–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dpr:wpaper:1267r |
| By: | A.C. Campbell; Filipp Ushchev; Yves Zenou |
| Abstract: | We develop a model of the process of entry under social learning via word-of-mouth (WOM). An incumbent’s product is known to the consumers, while the success of a potential entrant hinges on generating consumer awareness of the entrant’s product through WOM. We model WOM as a percolation process on a random graph. We show that whether an entrant can gain a non-negligible level of awareness depends on the social network structure via two sufficient statistics, which are functions of the first three factorial moments of the degree distribution. We categorize the different pricing equilibria into the classical blockaded, deterred, and accom- modated entry taxonomy. Under deterred entry, our model produces a model of limit pricing by an incumbent to prevent an entrant gaining a non-negligible level of awareness. By focus- ing on multinomial logit demand and on a mixed-Poisson degree distribution, we show that increasing the network density shifts the pricing equilibrium from blockaded to deterred and, finally, to accommodated entry. Using numerical simulations, we also show that the aggregate consumer surplus may be non-monotonic with respect to network density. Finally, if the in- cumbent has knowledge about the consumer’s number of friends and can charge personalized prices, we find that it is optimal for the incumbent to charge lower prices to more-connected consumers. |
| Keywords: | word of mouth, social learning, random network, limit pricing, entry |
| Date: | 2024–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulb:ulbeco:2013/387717 |
| By: | Shigeo Morita (Fukuoka University); Yukihiro Nishimura (Osaka University and CESifo); Hirofumi Okoshi (Okayama University) |
| Abstract: | As development of online market brings ongoing concerns that foreign app suppliers avoid value-added tax (VAT) in a domestic country, some countries design a tax reform which makes platform pay VAT instead of app suppliers (platform taxation). In the market where the monopoly platformer determines the prices of the network good and the commission fee of the platform services (with online apps as a representative example), this study investigates whether the prevention of tax leaks by platform tax improves the welfare of the host country, as well as the extent of the cross-market incidence of the two-sided market. We find that the tax reform reduces foreign app suppliers and consumption of a network good such as smartphones, with substantial extent of cross-market pass-through. The effect of the tax reform on home app suppliers crucially depends on the responsiveness of the app supplies from the number of users, which we call entry elasticity. Platform tax also increases the tax burden laid on the network product, but the monopoly seller let the increase of the tax burden born entirely by consumers. We also show that digitalization reduces the loss of welfare as well as tax planning by the platformer. |
| Keywords: | Value-added tax; Tax reform; Digital economy; Platform; Network externality |
| JEL: | F23 H26 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osk:wpaper:2502 |
| By: | Sukjin Han; Kyungho Lee |
| Abstract: | Copyright policies play a pivotal role in protecting the intellectual property of creators and companies in creative industries. The advent of cost-reducing technologies, such as generative AI, in these industries calls for renewed attention to the role of these policies. This paper studies product positioning and competition in a market of creatively differentiated products and the competitive and welfare effects of copyright protection. A common feature of products with creative elements is that their key attributes (e.g., images and text) are unstructured and thus high-dimensional. We focus on a stylized design product, fonts, and use data from the world's largest online marketplace for fonts. We use neural network embeddings to quantify unstructured attributes and measure the visual similarity. We show that this measure closely aligns with actual human perception. Based on this measure, we empirically find that competitions occur locally in the visual characteristics space. We then develop a structural model for supply and demand that integrate the embeddings. Through counterfactual analyses, we find that local copyright protection can enhance consumer welfare when products are relocated, and the interplay between copyright and cost-reducing technologies is essential in determining an optimal policy for social welfare. We believe that the embedding analysis and empirical models introduced in this paper can be applicable to a range of industries where unstructured data captures essential features of products and markets. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2501.16120 |
| By: | Pierre Bernhard (MACBES Team, INRIA Center of Université Côte d'Azur, Sophia Antipolis, France); Romain Biard (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CNRS, LmB, F-25000 Besançon, France); Marc Deschamps (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CRESE, UR3190, F-25000 Besançon, France) |
| Abstract: | There exist situations where firms (identical or not) are in a state of renewed interaction and where, at each period, in addition to exits, new firms (identical or not) may arrive. In such cases, no one is able to know ex ante exactly how many firms there will be in each period. One of the questions an incumbent firm might therefore ask itself, in this context, is what expected payoff it can expect. Our paper aims to provide an answer to this question, in finite and infinite horizons, using a discrete-time dynamic game with random arrival(s) and exit(s) of different types of firm(s). We first propose a general model, which we then particularize by considering the types as composed of identical players. Within this framework, we address the case of a dynamic Cournot oligopoly with sticky prices, and provide numerical illustrations to underline the interest of this approach and demonstrate its operational character. |
| Keywords: | Oligopoly, Random entries and exits, Types, Dynamic equilibirum, Cournot, sticky prices. |
| JEL: | C73 D43 L13 |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crb:wpaper:2025-01 |
| By: | Suzie Grondin; Arthur Charpentier; Philipp Ratz |
| Abstract: | Collusion in market pricing is a concept associated with human actions to raise market prices through artificially limited supply. Recently, the idea of algorithmic collusion was put forward, where the human action in the pricing process is replaced by automated agents. Although experiments have shown that collusive market equilibria can be reached through such techniques, without the need for human intervention, many of the techniques developed remain susceptible to exploitation by other players, making them difficult to implement in practice. In this article, we explore a situation where an agent has a multi-objective strategy, and not only learns to unilaterally exploit market dynamics originating from other algorithmic agents, but also learns to model the behaviour of other agents directly. Our results show how common critiques about the viability of algorithmic collusion in real-life settings can be overcome through the usage of slightly more complex algorithms. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2501.16935 |
| By: | Dorothée Brécard; Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline |
| Abstract: | How do environmental information and awareness interact to improve environmental quality by changing consumer behavior and firm strategies? This article provides theoretical insights using an original differentiation model within a general framework whose specific cases have been studied previously. On the demand side, only informed consumers differentiate brown from green product quality, while uninformed consumers consider these perfect substitutes. Moreover, all informed consumers value the green product and devalue the brown product as a result of an aversion effect but are heterogeneous in their environmental awareness. On the supply side, two firms offer different environmental qualities and compete on price. We consider two types of environmental campaigns: one that increases the number of informed consumers and one that increases the environmental awareness of informed consumers. We show that these campaigns crucially determine three market configurations: segmented; fragmented, with a brown product that appeals to both uninformed consumers and a fraction of informed consumers; and covered. Assuming that the greenest consumer behavior is abstention, we find that both campaigns do not always lead to better environmental quality; that is, a situation in which all consumers are informed and some highly environmentally aware is not necessarily the greenest situation. Depending on the aversion effect, the budget of the campaign organizer, and their relative cost-effectiveness, information and awareness-raising campaigns must be carefully combined to achieve the best possible environmental quality. |
| Keywords: | information campaign, NGO campaign, environmental awareness, environmental quality, vertical product differentiation |
| JEL: | D11 D62 D83 L15 Q58 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11628 |
| By: | Giammario Impullitti; Pontus Rendahl |
| Abstract: | In recent decades, the United States has experienced a notable rise in markups, a slowdown in productivity growth, and an increase in wealth inequality. We present a framework that unifies these trends into a common driving force. In particular, increased barriers to entry raises markups and boost corporate profits. Rising profits elevates firm valuations, fuels the demand for capital, and drives up asset returns. At the same time, the reduction in competition stifles overall economic growth. Wealth inequality is shaped by the return gap, r - g, which represents the difference between asset returns and the economy’s growth rate. The rise in capital demand together with a reduction in growth leads to a widening of the return gap, which amplifies inequality by affecting the saving patterns of households in different ways across the wealth distribution, deepening the divide between the rich and the poor. These trends result in substantial welfare losses for the majority of households, while only the top 1%, and especially the top 0.1%, experience gains. |
| Keywords: | Market Power, Growth, Heterogeneous Agents, Wealth Distribution. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:not:notcfc:2025/01 |
| By: | Carine Milcent (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | This research paper examines changes in patient care management in acute care hospitals between 2001 and 2011. During this time, there were two opposing factors at play: the competition effect of the reform and the policymaker's decision to reduce public hospitals across France. By studying the trends, it is evident that there has been a significant overall shift in patient care management during this period. This change could be attributed to the global competition effect and the concentration of in-patients in specific public facilities. Through the difference-in-difference method, the study analyzed time variations in the intensity of local competition. It was found that local competition had a negligible impact on patient care management. Additionally, the study revealed that there was a significant positive competition effect on high-technical procedures for the private sector, which is in line with the market segment where private sector hospitals have a leadership position and the pro-competitive reform intensified this position. The study also uncovered a negative competition effect on the length of stay for public hospitals. Prior to the implementation of the DRG-based payment reform, public sector hospitals were paid a global budget. However, after the reform was implemented, they had to shorten the length of stay to increase the number of stays. For-profit hospitals have always been paid based on the number of stays. The results are robust and consistent when alternative measures of local competition are used. |
| Keywords: | Competition, Hospital ownership, Policy evaluation, Length of stay, High-tech procedure, Difference-in-difference, Measure of market structure, Heart attack |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-04568345 |
| By: | Joep van Sloun |
| Abstract: | This paper revisits the Hotelling model with waiting costs Kohlberg (1983), focusing on two specific settings where pure Nash equilibria do not exist: the asymmetric model with two firms and the symmetric model with three firms. In the asymmetric two-firm model, we show that the weaker concept of point rationalizability has strong predictive power, as it selects exactly two locations for both firms. As the two firms become more similar in their efficiency in handling queues of consumers, the two point rationalizable locations converge towards the center of the line. In the symmetric three-firm model, the set of point rationalizable choices forms an interval. This interval is shrinking in the inefficiency levels of the firms in handling queues of consumers. |
| Date: | 2025–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2501.15545 |