Benefits of Competition and Indicators of Market Power
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Monopolistic Competition in General Equilibrium: Beyond the CES Evgeny Zhelobodko, Sergey Kokovin, Mathieu Parenti, Jacques-François Thisse
Monopolistic competition in general equilibrium: Beyond the CES Evgeny Zhelobodko, Sergey Kokovin, Mathieu Parenti, Jacques-François Thisse To cite this version: Evgeny Zhelobodko, Sergey Kokovin, Mathieu Parenti, Jacques-François Thisse. Monopolistic com- petition in general equilibrium: Beyond the CES. 2011. halshs-00566431 HAL Id: halshs-00566431 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00566431 Preprint submitted on 16 Feb 2011 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. WORKING PAPER N° 2011 - 08 Monopolistic competition in general equilibrium: Beyond the CES Evgeny Zhelobodko Sergey Kokovin Mathieu Parenti Jacques-François Thisse JEL Codes: D43, F12, L13 Keywords: monopolistic competition, additive preferences, love for variety, heterogeneous firms PARIS-JOURDAN SCIENCES ECONOMIQUES 48, BD JOURDAN – E.N.S. – 75014 PARIS TÉL. : 33(0) 1 43 13 63 00 – FAX : 33 (0) 1 43 13 63 10 www.pse.ens.fr CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE – ECOLE DES HAUTES ETUDES EN SCIENCES SOCIALES ÉCOLE DES PONTS PARISTECH – ECOLE NORMALE SUPÉRIEURE – INSTITUT NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE AGRONOMIQUE Monopolistic Competition in General Equilibrium: Beyond the CES∗ Evgeny Zhelobodko† Sergey Kokovin‡ Mathieu Parenti§ Jacques-François Thisse¶ 13th February 2011 Abstract We propose a general model of monopolistic competition and derive a complete characterization of the market equilibrium using the concept of Relative Love for Variety. -
Navigating Social and Institutional Barriers to Markets: How Social Entrepreneurs Identify and Evaluate Opportunities Jeffrey Robinson
7 Navigating Social and Institutional Barriers to Markets: How Social Entrepreneurs Identify and Evaluate Opportunities Jeffrey Robinson Introduction Entrepreneurship research can be broadly placed into three categories: that which examines the people (entrepreneurs); that which examines the process and that which examines the entrepreneurial or business opportunities. This chapter specifically looks at social entrepreneurial opportunities and the process of identifying and evaluating these types of opportunities. I address three important questions: • What makes social entrepreneurial opportunities different from other types of opportunities? • What makes social entrepreneurship special? • How do social entrepreneurs find social entrepreneurial opportunities? The phenomenon of social entrepreneurship For the purposes of this chapter, I define social entrepreneurship (SE) as a process (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000) that includes: the identifica- tion of a specific social problem and a specific solution (or set of solu- tions) to address it; the evaluation of the social impact, the business model and the sustainability of the venture; and the creation of a social mission-oriented for-profit or a business-oriented nonprofit entity that pursues the double (or triple) bottom line. This approach to defining SE allows for future research directions and for clearer distinctions from ‘traditional’ entrepreneurship. 95 96 Social Entrepreneurship Recently, there has been an explosion of interest in the phenome- non of SE. It is an attractive area for practitioners, policy makers, the media and business schools because it addresses several issues in society (Dees, 1998; Thompson, 2002; Alvord, Brown and Letts, 2004; Brainard and Siplon, 2004). SE is a uniting concept that demonstrates the usefulness of business principles in achieving social goals. -
Price Competition with Satisficing Consumers
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Aberdeen University Research Archive Price Competition with Satisficing Consumers∗ Mauro Papiy Abstract The ‘satisficing’ heuristic by Simon (1955) has recently attracted attention both theoretically and experimentally. In this paper I study a price-competition model in which the consumer is satisficing and firms can influence his aspiration price via marketing. Unlike existing models, whether a price comparison is made depends on both pricing and marketing strategies. I fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium by investigating the implications of satisficing on various aspects of market competition. The proposed model can help explain well-documented economic phenomena, such as the positive correla- tion between marketing and prices observed in some markets. JEL codes: C79, D03, D43. Keywords: Aspiration Price, Bounded Rationality, Price Competition, Satisficing, Search. ∗This version: August 2017. I would like to thank the Editor of this journal, two anonymous referees, Ed Hopkins, Hans Hvide, Kohei Kawamura, Ran Spiegler, the semi- nar audience at universities of Aberdeen, East Anglia, and Trento, and the participants to the 2015 OLIGO workshop (Madrid) and the 2015 Econometric Society World Congress (Montreal) for their comments. Financial support from the Aberdeen Principal's Excel- lence Fund and the Scottish Institute for Research in Economics is gratefully acknowledged. Any error is my own responsibility. yBusiness School, University of Aberdeen - Edward Wright Building, Dunbar Street, AB24 3QY, Old Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. E-mail address: [email protected]. 1 1 Introduction According to Herbert Simon (1955), in most global models of rational choice, all alternatives are eval- uated before a choice is made. -
Industrial Organization 06 Market Structure and Market Power
Industrial Organization 06 Market structure and market power Marc Bourreau Telecom ParisTech Marc Bourreau (TPT) Lecture 06: Market structure and market power 1 / 39 Outline 1 Introduction: definition of market power 2 Definition of relevant market An example: market definition in the telecommunications sector Approach based on cross price-elasticities Other approaches 3 The relationship between concentration and market power An example with the Cournot oligopoly model Issues in measuring concentration and market power Other concentration measures Other market power measures 4 The SCP paradigm 5 Some elements about the control of concentration Marc Bourreau (TPT) Lecture 06: Market structure and market power 2 / 39 Introduction Introduction Remember, from the lecture on Monopoly: Definition of "market power" The ability of a firm to raise its price over marginal cost. Importance of measuring "market power": In competition policy, some practices (for instance, bundling) are illegal if a firm has market power. In order to estimate the market power of a firm, we need to define first the relevant market. Marc Bourreau (TPT) Lecture 06: Market structure and market power 3 / 39 Market definition Definition of the relevant market Two questions: Product market Which products should we include in the "market"? Geographical market Which geographical zone do we have to consider? An economic definition of the market A market can be defined as a group of products presenting strong demand- substitutability and supply-substitutability. Marc Bourreau (TPT) Lecture 06: Market structure and market power 4 / 39 Market definition Definition of the relevant market Definition of the European Commission (1997) The relevant market includes all the products and/or services considered as interchangeable or substitutable on the account of product characteristics, price, and regular use. -
Chapter 5 Perfect Competition, Monopoly, and Economic Vs
Chapter Outline Chapter 5 • From Perfect Competition to Perfect Competition, Monopoly • Supply Under Perfect Competition Monopoly, and Economic vs. Normal Profit McGraw -Hill/Irwin © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved. McGraw -Hill/Irwin © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved. From Perfect Competition to Picking the Quantity to Maximize Profit Monopoly The Perfectly Competitive Case P • Perfect Competition MC ATC • Monopolistic Competition AVC • Oligopoly P* MR • Monopoly Q* Q Many Competitors McGraw -Hill/Irwin © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved. McGraw -Hill/Irwin © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Picking the Quantity to Maximize Profit Characteristics of Perfect The Monopoly Case Competition P • a large number of competitors, such that no one firm can influence the price MC • the good a firm sells is indistinguishable ATC from the ones its competitors sell P* AVC • firms have good sales and cost forecasts D • there is no legal or economic barrier to MR its entry into or exit from the market Q* Q No Competitors McGraw -Hill/Irwin © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved. McGraw -Hill/Irwin © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., All Rights Reserved. 1 Monopoly Monopolistic Competition • The sole seller of a good or service. • Monopolistic Competition: a situation in a • Some monopolies are generated market where there are many firms producing similar but not identical goods. because of legal rights (patents and copyrights). • Example : the fast-food industry. McDonald’s has a monopoly on the “Happy Meal” but has • Some monopolies are utilities (gas, much competition in the market to feed kids water, electricity etc.) that result from burgers and fries. -
Competitive Supply of Money in a New Monetarist Model
Munich Personal RePEc Archive Competitive Supply of Money in a New Monetarist Model Waknis, Parag 11 September 2017 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/75401/ MPRA Paper No. 75401, posted 23 Sep 2017 10:12 UTC Competitive Supply of Money in a New Monetarist Model Parag Waknis∗ September 11, 2017 Abstract Whether currency can be efficiently provided by private competitive money suppliers is arguably one of the fundamental questions in monetary theory. It is also one with practical relevance because of the emergence of multiple competing financial assets as well as competing cryptocurrencies as means of payments in certain class of transactions. In this paper, a dual currency version of Lagos and Wright (2005) money search model is used to explore the answer to this question. The centralized market sub-period is modeled as infinitely repeated game between two long lived players (money suppliers) and a short lived player (a continuum of agents), where longetivity of the players refers to the ability to influence aggregate outcomes. There are multiple equilibria, however we show that equilibrium featuring lowest inflation tax is weakly renegotiation proof, suggesting that better inflation outcome is possible in an environment with currency competition. JEL Codes: E52, E61. Keywords: currency competition, repeated games, long lived- short lived players, inflation tax, money search, weakly renegotiation proof. ∗The paper is based on my PhD dissertation completed at the University of Connecticut (UConn). I thank Christian Zimmermann (Major Advisor, St.Louis Fed), Ricardo Lagos (Associate Advisor, NYU) and Vicki Knoblauch (Associate Advisor, UConn) for their guidance and support. I thank participants at various conferences and the anonymous refer- ees at Economic Inquiry for their helpful comments and suggestions. -
The United States Has a Market Concentration Problem Reviewing Concentration Estimates in Antitrust Markets, 2000-Present
THE UNITED STATES HAS A MARKET CONCENTRATION PROBLEM REVIEWING CONCENTRATION ESTIMATES IN ANTITRUST MARKETS, 2000-PRESENT ISSUE BRIEF BY ADIL ABDELA AND MARSHALL STEINBAUM1 | SEPTEMBER 2018 Since the 1970s, America’s antitrust policy regime has been weakening and market power has been on the rise. High market concentration—in which few firms compete in a given market—is one indicator of market power. From 1985 to 2017, the number of mergers completed annually rose from 2,308 to 15,361 (IMAA 2017). Recently, policymakers, academics, and journalists have questioned whether the ongoing merger wave, and lax antitrust enforcement more generally, is indeed contributing to rising concentration, and in turn, whether concentration really portends a market power crisis in the economy. In this issue brief, we review the estimates of market concentration that have been conducted in a number of industries since 2000 as part of merger retrospectives and other empirical investigations. The result of that survey is clear: market concentration in the U.S. economy is high, according to the thresholds adopted by the antitrust agencies themselves in the Horizontal Merger Guidelines. By way of background, recent studies of industry concentration conclude that it is both high and rising over time. For example, Grullon, Larkin, and Michaely conclude that concentration increased in 75% of industries from 1997 to 2012. In response to these and similar studies, the antitrust enforcement agencies recently declared that their findings are not relevant to the question of whether market concentration has increased because they study industrial sectors, not antitrust markets. Specifically, they wrote, “The U.S. -
Harvard Law Review 132, No. 2, December 2018, Pp
SURESH NAIDU November 12, 2019 BUSINESS ADDRESS: 1405 IAB MC 3328 [email protected] 420 W. 118th St. www.santafe.edu/~snaidu New York, NY. 10027 APPOINTMENTS: Professor, Department of Economics/SIPA, Columbia University. September-December 2016 Visiting Researcher Princeton University Industrial Relations Section. July 2010-July 2016 - Assistant Professor, Department of Economics/SIPA, Columbia University. August 2013-May 2014 – Visiting Assistant Professor, MIT Department of Economics. 2008-2010 - Harvard Academy Junior Scholar Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University. OTHER AFFILIATIONS: Santa Fe Institute External Faculty Roosevelt Institute Fellow NBER Faculty Research Fellow (DEV, POL, and, DAE) BREAD faculty affiliate Microsoft Research New York: Visiting Researcher (2016-2017), Consulting Researcher (2017-2018). Faculty Affiliate with Columbia University Population Research Center and Data Sciences Institute. Social Science Research Council Working Group on Big Data in the Historical Social Sciences. EDUCATION: DEGREE DATE FIELD University of California, Berkeley Ph.D. December 2008 Economics University of Massachusetts, Amherst M.A. August 2004 Economics University of Waterloo B.Math.(With Distinction) May 2001 Pure Mathematics (minor in Peace and Conflict Studies) PUBLISHED PAPERS: “Text-based Ideal Points” (with David Blei and Keyon Vafa) -Proceedings of the 58th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics 2020. “Do Americans Want to Tax Capital? Evidence from Online Surveys” (with Ray Fisman, Ilyana Kuziemko, and Keith Gladstone). -Forthcoming in Journal of Public Economics.. “Monopsony in Online Labor Markets” (with Arindrajit Dube, Jeff Jacobs, and Siddarth Suri) -American Economic Review- Insights, 2(1) March 2020. 33-46. “American Slavery and Labor Market Power” -Economic History of Developing Regions, 35(1), January 2020 3-22. -
Real Business Cycles
Real Business Cycles JesusFernandez-Villaverde University of Pennsylvania 1 Business Cycle U.S. economy uctuates over time. How can we build models to think about it? Do we need di erent models than before to do so? Traditionally the answer was yes. Nowadays the answer is no. We will focus on equilibrium models of the cycle. 2 Business Cycles and Economic Growth How di erent are long-run growth and the business cycle? Changes in Output per Worker Secular Growth Business Cycle Due to changes in capital 1/3 0 Due to changes in labor 0 2/3 Due to changes in productivity 2/3 1/3 We want to use the same models with a slightly di erent focus. 3 Stochastic Neoclassical Growth Model Cass (1965) and Koopmans (1965). Brock and Mirman (1972). Kydland and Prescott (1982). Hansen (1985). King, Plosser, and Rebelo (1988a,b). 4 References King, Plosser, and Rebelo (1988a,b). Chapter by Cooley and Prescott in Cooley's Frontier of Business Cycle Research (in fact, you want to read the whole book). Chapter by King and Rebelo (Resurrection Real Business Cycle Mod- els) in Handbook of Macroeconomics. Chapter 12 in Ljungqvist and Sargent. 5 Preferences Preferences: 1 t t t t E0 (1 + n) u ct s ; lt s tX=0 t t for ct s 0; lt s (0; 1) 2 where n is population growth. Standard technical assumptions (continuity, di erentiability, Inada con- ditions, etc...). However, those still leave many degrees of freedom. Restrictions imposed by economic theory and empirical observation. 6 Restrictions on Preferences Three observations: 1. -
When Are Sunk Costs Barriers to Entry? Entry Barriers in Economic and Antitrust Analysis†
WHEN ARE SUNK COSTS BARRIERS TO ENTRY? ENTRY BARRIERS IN ECONOMIC AND ANTITRUST ANALYSIS† What Is a Barrier to Entry? By R. PRESTON MCAFEE,HUGO M. MIALON, AND MICHAEL A. WILLIAMS* In the Papers and Proceedings of the Forty- ing the concept of barriers to entry. We begin by eighth Meeting of the American Economic As- contrasting the definitions of an entry barrier sociation, Donald H. Wallace (1936 p. 83) proposed in the economics literature. We then proposed a research program that proved vision- introduce a classification system to clear up the ary: “The nature and extent of barriers to free existing confusion, and we employ it to assess entry needs thorough study.” Fifteen years later, the nature of the barriers posed by scale econ- Joe S. Bain published a book that was the first omies and sunk costs. thorough study of entry barriers. In this book, Bain (1956) defined an entry I. History of the Concept barrier as anything that allows incumbents to earn above-normal profits without inducing en- In chronological order, the seven principal try. He believed that economies of scale and definitions of an entry barrier proposed in the capital requirements meet his definition because economics literature are as follows. they seem to be positively correlated with high profits. George J. Stigler (1968) later defined an Definition 1 (Bain, 1956 p. 3): A barrier to entry barrier as a cost advantage of incumbents entry is an advantage of established sellers in an over entrants. With equal access to technology, industry over potential entrant sellers, which is scale economies are not an entry barrier accord- reflected in the extent to which established sell- ing to this definition, and neither are capital ers can persistently raise their prices above requirements, unless incumbents never paid competitive levels without attracting new firms them. -
The Meaning of Competition*
HAYEK The Meaning of Competition* Friedrich A. Hayek LINK TO ABSTRACT I. There are signs of increasing awareness among economists that what they have been discussing in recent years under the name of ‘competition’ is not the same thing as what is thus called in ordinary language. But, although there have been some valiant attempts to bring discussion back to earth and to direct attention to the problems of real life, notably by J. M. Clark and Fritz Machlup,1 the general view seems still to regard the conception of competition currently employed by economists as the significant one and to treat that of the businessman as an abuse. It appears to be generally held that the so-called theory of ‘perfect competition’ provides the appropriate model for judging the effectiveness of competition in real life and that, to the extent that real competition differs from that model, it is undesirable and even harmful. For this attitude there seems to me to exist very little justification. I shall attempt to show that what the theory of perfect competition discusses has little claim to be called ‘competition’ at all and that its conclusions are of little use as guides to policy. The reason for this seems to me to be that this theory throughout assumes that state of affairs already to exist which, according to the truer view of the older theory, the process of competition tends to bring about (or to approxi- mate) and that, if the state of affairs assumed by the theory of perfect competition * This essay reproduces the substance of the Stafford Little Lecture delivered at Princeton University on May 20, 1946. -
Modern Monetary Theory: a Marxist Critique
Class, Race and Corporate Power Volume 7 Issue 1 Article 1 2019 Modern Monetary Theory: A Marxist Critique Michael Roberts [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower Part of the Economics Commons Recommended Citation Roberts, Michael (2019) "Modern Monetary Theory: A Marxist Critique," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.7.1.008316 Available at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol7/iss1/1 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Modern Monetary Theory: A Marxist Critique Abstract Compiled from a series of blog posts which can be found at "The Next Recession." Modern monetary theory (MMT) has become flavor of the time among many leftist economic views in recent years. MMT has some traction in the left as it appears to offer theoretical support for policies of fiscal spending funded yb central bank money and running up budget deficits and public debt without earf of crises – and thus backing policies of government spending on infrastructure projects, job creation and industry in direct contrast to neoliberal mainstream policies of austerity and minimal government intervention. Here I will offer my view on the worth of MMT and its policy implications for the labor movement. First, I’ll try and give broad outline to bring out the similarities and difference with Marx’s monetary theory.