Bilateral Monopoly Research Articles

Intra-Firm Coordination of Product Management in a Supply Chain

A vertically integrated channel would prefer to coordinate the pricing of its products. In this paper, we investigate drivers of product line pricing decisions in a bilateral monopoly where a manufacturer produces and sells two substitutable or complementary products to a retailer. In a two-stage game, each firm commits credibly in the first stage to a pricing scheme within its own organization: product line pricing (PLP) or nonproduct line pricing (NPLP). In the second stage, depending on the relative balance of power in the supply chain, the firms engage in either a Nash or a leader-follower pricing game. We study the equilibrium of the two-stage game under a general symmetric demand function. With strategic interaction between firms, a firm may choose NPLP as the equilibrium pricing strategy. In particular, when the second stage is a leader-follower game, the price leader chooses PLP, and the follower may choose NPLP only if the inefficiency of using NPLP empowers the follower by increasing the demand sensitivity to the leader's margin. When the second stage is a vertical Nash game, whether NPLP occurs in equilibrium depends on the nature of coupling between demand interdependence and vertical strategic dependence: NPLP can be an equilibrium only if products are demand substitutes (complements) and vertical strategic dependencies are complementary (substitutable). We find that prisoner's dilemma exists in the first stage for both types of second-stage pricing games. In those cases, one firm may have the incentive to commit to a pricing scheme in the first stage prior to its channel partner and steer the supply chain away from prisoner's dilemma.

Could myopic pricing be a strategic choice in marketing channels? A game theoretic analysis

We identify the conditions under which a myopic pricing behavior could be a profit enhancing tool in the distribution channel. A channel member is myopic when he ignores the evolution of the retail prices when actual and past retail prices affect consumers’ purchasing decisions. A differential game is formulated where channel members control transfer and retail prices. We start by examining a bilateral monopoly, and then introduce competition at the manufacturing level. The competing manufacturers play à la Nash and can be both myopic, both farsighted, or one myopic while the other is farsighted. We show that, for a bilateral monopoly, myopia enhances total channel profit when the effect of the reference price is small enough. This remains true under competition at the manufacturing level when products are differentiated enough.

Perfect competition in an oligopoly (including bilateral monopoly)

We show that if limit orders are required to vary smoothly, then strategic (Nash) equilibria of the double auction mechanism yield competitive (Walras) allocations. It is not necessary to have competitors on any side of any market: smooth trading is a substitute for price wars. In particular, Nash equilibria are Walrasian even in a bilateral monopoly.

The Bargaining Strength of a Milk Marketing Cooperative

As a result of economies of size, food processors are generally large and few in number. These characteristics put processors at a bargaining advantage over independent farmers. Marketing cooperatives were established to counter the uneven bargaining position of individual farmers. This article investigates the relative bargaining strength of one milk marketing cooperative and several fluid milk processors. The Nash bargaining model can be used to analyze the negotiated price in the Florida fluid milk market which acts like a bilateral monopoly. The milk marketing cooperatives have bargained well with the milk marketing processors; The monthly bargaining strength of the Southeast Dairy Cooperative, Inc. (SDC), exceeds the monthly bargaining strength of the processors in all twelve months, ranging from a low of 0.6664 in January to a high of 0.7831 in September. The monthly average bargaining strength across all months for SDC is 0.7326.

Contracting for Environmental Property Rights: The Case of Vittel

Based on a real case of contracting for environmental property rights, we explore several implications of Coase's insights. The case study adds empirical content to basic transaction costs concepts by analysing the design and implementation of a contractual arrangement between a pollutee—a bottler of mineral water—and several polluting farmers. We analyse the bargaining between the two parties to determine how transaction cost issues (valuation disputes, bilateral monopoly conditions and third‐party effects) were overcome and how they succeeded in contracting for environmental property rights. We compare the Vittel case with other similar cases to draw lessons for environmental rights negotiations.

Chinatown Revisited: Owens Valley and Los Angeles--Bargaining Costs and Fairness Perceptions of the First Major Water Rights Exchange

I examine a complicated bargaining problem in the acquisition of private land and water rights by Los Angeles in Owens Valley. This is a pivotal episode in the political economy of contemporary western water. More broadly, Owens Valley provides empirical evidence on how the gains from exchange were divided among the parties andhowequityconcernsshapedtheprocessandsucceedingassessmentofmarket allocation. Negotiations for key properties took place within a bilateral monopoly context, and the bargaining strategies of both parties raised the transaction costs of exchange and formed fairness perceptions about the outcome of the exchange. I analyze the bargaining environment and estimate the determinants of when properties sold and the prices paid for land and water. Farmers who colluded did better by selling the properties than if they had remained in agriculture. Their ‘‘cartels,’’ however, were not strong enough to secure more of the surplus from reallocating water fromagriculture to urban demand. Most of thegainswent toLosAngeleslandowners, and this is a source of the notion of water ‘‘theft’’ that continues today.

Ministerial Advisers and the Politics of Policy‐Making: Bureaucratic Permanence and Popular Control

The advent of ministerial advisers of the partisan variety – a third element interposing itself into Westminster's bilateral monopoly – has been acknowledged as a significant development in a number of jurisdictions. While there are commonalities across contexts, the New Zealand experience provides an opportunity to explore the extent to which the advent of ministerial advisers is consistent with rational choice accounts of relations between political and administrative actors in executive government. Public administration reform in New Zealand since the mid 1980s – and in particular machinery of government design – was quite explicitly informed by rational choice accounts, and normative Public Choice in particular. This article reflects on the role of ministerial advisers in the policy‐making process and, on the basis of assessments by a variety of political and policy actors, examines the extent to which the institutional and relational aspects of executive government are indeed consistent with rational choice accounts of the ‘politics of policy‐making’. The reader is offered a new perspective through which to view the advent, and the contribution of ministerial advisers to policy‐making in executive government.

Quasi-Partnerships in Distribution

This paper concerns the sale of a vertically differentiated good by a manufacturer to retailers that have market power when reselling to consumers. The contractual relationships between the manufacturer and individual retailers are characterized as “quasi-partnerships,” reflecting the ongoing and multi-dimensional nature of such relationships. Contractual terms are predicted by the Nash bargaining solution and are distinguished from those in an ordinary bilateral monopoly because they make allowance for competing, vertically differentiated brands. The model predicts that differences in retailers’ ability to promote the manufacturer’s brand induce prices that vary systematically with the manufacturer’s market share of retailers’ sales.

Alternative bargaining solutions in asymmetric tariff rates negotiations

The article was dedicated to the application of cooperative games tools to the particular bargaining problem. The bargaining is about tariffrates between two countries. Analysis was performed on the framework of simple market model with perfect competition within countries and bilateral monopoly relation between them. There were two bargaining schemes applied in order to calculate cooperative solutions. First was Nash bargaining solution, the second was Kalai and Smorodinsky proposition. Both methods successfully indicated cooperative solutions. Application of chosen bargaining schemes brought the conclusion that outcome of the indications of cooperative solutions strongly depends on the nature of explored economic model. The examination of influence parameters' changes proved that worsening the situation of the subject led to the decrease of its benefit in every case. In one case it also caused the decrease of benefit of the other party. (original abstract)

EFFECTIVENESS OF COOP ADVERTISING PROGRAMS IN COMPETITIVE DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS

We propose a model of retail promotions for competitive distribution channels and investigate whether cooperative advertising programs are profitable for such channels. While previous studies showed that coop programs increase total channel profits in bilateral monopolies, no evidence of such a result has been provided for channels where competition is present at the manufacturing and the retailing levels. In this paper, we consider a distribution channel formed by two manufacturers and two retailers and propose a model that accounts for brand and store substitution effects generated by the retailer's promotional efforts. The efficiency of the coop plan is investigated by comparing equilibria of four non-cooperative games; one where manufacturers do not offer any promotional support to the retailers, one where manufacturers do offer such a support and two scenarios where in turn only one manufacturer is offering such program. We show that when competition is introduced, coop ad programs may be due to a prisonner's dilemma situation for the manufacturers. The benefit for retailers and consumers is also assessed.

Efficient replenishment in the distribution channel

Efficient replenishment (ER), a business process that involves the reduction of order cost to facilitate deliveries of goods from the manufacturer to the retailer, is becoming increasingly important in distribution channel management. While a well-executed ER program is expected to lower total channel costs and increase channel profit, very little is known about how this incremental channel profit is distributed between the manufacturer and the retailer and how it varies across the two common channel relationship structures, retailer price leadership and manufacturer price leadership. In this paper, we develop the conditions under which the manufacturer and the retailer gain more or less from the adoption of ER based on a game theoretic channel model of bilateral monopoly under the two channel relationship structures. We develop analytic results on the impact of ER on purchase quantity, price and the distribution of profits in three cases, namely, (1) when only the retailer adopts ER, (2) when both the manufacturer and the retailer adopt ER, and (3) when the manufacturer and the retailer are vertically integrated in the distribution channel, which adopts ER. The results, which can be generalized for all demand functions, show that the manufacturer benefits from the retailer's adoption of ER only when the manufacturer's holding cost relative to the retailer's is sufficiently large, relative to its order cost relative to the retailer's. By adopting ER, the retailer gains more than what the manufacturer gains even if the manufacturer is the price leader. Both the parties are likely to gain more if they both adopt ER than if only the retailer adopts ER. The incremental channel profit due to the retailer's ER adoption is highest in a vertically integrated distribution channel and is greater in a retailer-led channel relationship than in a manufacturer-led relationship.

Bilateral monopoly, identical distributors, and game-theoretic analyses of distribution channels

Game-theoretic analyses of distribution channels have generated six widely held beliefs (we call them Channel Hypotheses) whose universal soundness has not been examined. To assess the validity of these Hypotheses, we develop a general, linear-demand model in which distributors face heterogeneity in demand, heterogeneity in costs, and any degree of intensity of inter-distributor competition. For ease of comparison, we nest the bilateral-monopoly model and the identical-distributors model within our general model. Our analysis reveals that the Channel Hypotheses do not generalize beyond the specific game-theoretic models from which they were derived. This lack of generality is critical, because these beliefs have led to intuitively appealing (but inadvertently misleading) strategic advice for managers and modeling advice for game theorists. From our general, linear-demand model, we derive six Channel Propositions that correct these accumulated errors of conceptualization and that generate a richer, more broadly applicable set of managerial and modeling implications. We also present a Channel-Modeling Proposition that we believe will help modelers avoid the errors of conceptualization described in this paper.

Property, Liability and Market Power: The Antitrust Side of Copyright

Abstract This paper investigates the interplay between copyright law and antitrust law in two distinct respects. We first argue that the origin of copyright seems to be rooted not only in the need to foster the production and the spread of knowledge but also in the necessity of limiting market power on the side of distributors. We then show the potential impact on market competition of the evolution of copyright as a property rule. While property rules reduce transaction costs in the standard case of bilateral monopoly over the exchange of information goods, they might increase transaction costs. When coupled with market power, a property rule enables the right holder to control uses and prices so as to implement entry deterrence strategies against potential competitors. Conversely, we argue that reversing property rules in favor of competitors or switching to liability rules for copyright may restore competitive outcomes. This conclusion brings new insights on the application of the essential facility doctrine to copyrighted works.

Valutazioni economico-estimative nella valorizzazione di edifici storico-architettonici

The necessary factor for the beginning exploitation process of the historical-architectural building often may be the transfer of real property. When the object of the transfer is not reproducible, to determine the sale’s price we can be assumed that the offer’s negotiation power is monopolistic type. However it is also possible that, putting the building on the market, the supply clashes with an only subject interested in the purchase. This condition can be assimilated to a scheme of bilateral monopoly. This is the frame in which the development of the model of iteration between supply and demand is built for the definition of a probable price. The different characterization of the subjects involved in the transfer (public or private) is conclusive factor of the model.

Market Structure and Welfare in Two-Sided Payment Markets with Heterogenous and Non-Strategic Customers

Two-sided network effects in card payment systems are analysed under different market structures, e.g., competition, one-sided monopoly, bilateral monopoly and duopoly; with and without an interchange fee; for the so-called Baxter's case of non-strategic and heterogenous merchants. A partial ranking of market structures according to their welfare effects is provided. Some support is found for the policy adopted by the EU Commission in the competition law case concerning Visa's interchange fees.

Vertical Information Sharing in Distribution Channels

This paper examines the information-sharing behavior of firms in a distribution channel context. While information sharing among firms can occur in a horizontal (among competitors) or vertical (channel members) context, previous attempts at modeling information sharing has primarily been restricted to the horizontal context. For marketers, channel alliances are interesting in view of their growing popularity as witnessed by initiatives like ECR and category management. Such initiatives usually involve the pooling of, often complimentary, information available with manufacturers and retailers. It is argued that such pooling of information should lead to better decision-making and hence it is desirable. However, in practice, category management is often implemented with a somewhat interesting institution of category captain, which appears to be a restricted form of information pooling. It involves the retailer entering into an alliance with only one (of many) supplier in a category, who is accorded the role of category captain. We first analyze the information sharing incentives of the two industry participants, manufacturer and retailer, in a bilateral monopoly. We find that whether sharing will occur or not is crucially dependent on the baseline quality of information available with the firms and on the degree of complementarity of resources that in turn determine how effective information pooling is. Next, using a model of competing symmetric duopolists selling through a common retailer, we show that information sharing between the alliance partners can sometimes give rise to the emergence of the so-called category captain, i.e., an exclusive alliance. The total channel profits and those of the partners in alliance go up. This increased profit is due to higher average wholesale prices, which can be interpreted as reduction in price promotions, a key goal of the category management initiative. The model generates predictions about when information- sharing alliances are more likely and can also be extended to answer managerially relevant question for retailers, i.e., who to choose as category captain?

Market design with endogenous preferences

This paper explores the interdependence between market structure and an important class of cognitive biases. Starting with a familiar bilateral monopoly framework, we characterize the endogenous emergence of preference distortions during bargaining which cause negotiators to perceive their private valuations differently than they would outside the adversarial negotiation context. Using this model, we then demonstrate how a number of external interventions in the structure and/or organization of market interactions (occurring before trade, after trade, or during negotiations themselves) can profoundly alter the nature of these dispositions. Our results demonstrate that many such interventions frequently (though not always) share qualitatively similar characteristics to market interventions that are often proposed for overcoming more conventional forms of market failure. Nevertheless, our analysis underscores the importance of understanding the precise link between cognitive failures and market structure prior to the implementation of any particular proposed reform.

The Economics of the World Iron and Steel Industry: 1950-1980

This paper presents an analysis of the world iron and steel industry from 1950 to 1980. After presenting a technical overview describing the technological possesses in use during that period by the steel, the iron ore and the ferrous scrap industries, we describe and analyse, on economic grounds, the market structure and the market forces that shaped the iron and steel industry from the beginning of the 1950s to the end of the 1970s. After analysing the market structure of the iron ore and the steel industry, we argue that bilateral monopoly is an adequate framework to deal with the iron and steel market during that period, and that the steel industry has stronger market power to influence iron ore prices to its advantage.

Estimating bargaining strengths of Canadian chicken producers and processors using a bilateral monopoly framework

This study develops a dynamic price adjustment mechanism for the Canadian chicken industry using a bilateral monopoly framework. The model compares the processors and producers' bargaining strengths in order to determine the equilibrium price of live chickens in Ontario. The theoretical results show how the equilibrium price of live chickens and each party's profit depend on the coefficient of bargaining power. The stochastic properties of price and cost data call for cointegration techniques to infer the bargaining weights. The hypothesis of equal bargaining strengths between processors and producers in Ontario over the 1997–2002 period is strongly rejected by the data. It is shown that chicken processors had greater bargaining power than chicken producers because live chicken prices were highly correlated to chicken producers' average costs. [Econlit citations: C22, L13 and Q13]. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Agribusiness 22: 159–173, 2006.

Cartel contract duration: empirical evidence from inter-war international cartels

A formal cartel organization sets up a multilateral relationship between firms in a given industry. While standard contracting literature has studied bilateral monopoly relationships in detail, there are horizontal relationships, like cartels, that also have contractual aspects. To shed light on how these contracts work, this paper takes a sample of legal formal cartel contracts and examines their structure and durability. Borrowing from industrial organization theories and transaction cost theories, the empirical model tests for the importance of demand uncertainty and cartel organizational characteristics in determining cartel contract duration. The results show that the more uncertain the environment within which the cartel operates, the shorter the expected cartel duration. Other industry structure characteristics and cartel organization variables included in the empirical model have a much weaker influence on duration.