Cost-reducing Investment Research Articles

Price-Cap Regulation of Firms That Supply Their Rivals

Abstract We study price-cap regulation in a market in which a vertically integrated upstream monopolist sells an essential input to a downstream competitor. In the absence of regulation, entry benefits both firms, but may harm downstream consumers because the upstream monopolist can set a high input price that would push downstream prices above the unregulated monopoly level. However, if a regulator caps the incumbent’s upstream and downstream prices, consumers and firms are better off after entry than under a price-cap monopoly. We extend our model to examine the concern that price caps may induce incumbents to forgo cost-reducing investments and dampen entrants’ incentives to self-provision the input.

Common ownership in a delivered pricing duopoly

This study investigates how common ownership affects the location choice of duopolists. We formulate a shipping (delivered pricing) model on the Hotelling line in which firms choose their locations and then compete in prices. We show that even if high prices due to common ownership do not reduce welfare under inelastic demand, common ownership can still lead to welfare loss by promoting dispersion among firms. We also find that common ownership promotes transport cost-reducing investments and accelerates welfare loss in excessive investments.

Investment Incentives in Tradable Emissions Markets with Price Floors

Concerns about cost containment and price volatility have led regulators to include price controls in many cap-and-trade markets. We study how these controls affect firms’ incentives to invest in the adoption of abatement technologies in a model with abatement cost uncertainty. Price floors increase investment incentives because they raise the expected benefits from lowering abatement costs. We also report a market experiment that features abatement cost uncertainty and the opportunity for cost-reducing investment, with and without a price floor. Consistent with the theoretical model, investment is significantly greater with the price floor in place. Emissions permit prices also respond as predicted to abatement investments and emissions shocks. In particular, prices are only responsive to investment and shocks when the price floor is not implemented.

The effect of horizontal mergers, when firms compete in prices and investments

Motivated by a number of high-profile antitrust cases, we study mergers when firms offer differentiated products and compete in prices and investments. Since the net effect of the merger is a priori ambiguous, we use aggregative game theory to sign it: we find that absent efficiency gains, the merger always reduces total investments and consumer surplus. We also prove that there exist classes of models for which the results obtained with cost-reducing investments are equivalent to those with quality-enhancing investments.

Investor State Dispute Settlement and Multinational Firm Behavior

This paper shows that Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS) makes multinational firms more aggressive by increasing cost-reducing investments with the aim to enlarge the potential compensation an ISDS provision may offer. While a larger investment reduces the market distortion, it will also make potential compensations larger. Consequently, potential compensations to a foreign investor do not imply a zero-sum game. ISDS may decrease domestic welfare, in particular if the investment leads to the establishment of an export platform, and we find that even global welfare may decline.

Disclosure of Investment Information in a Vertically Related Industry

This study investigates the strategic disclosure of a downstream firm’s information regarding cost-reducing investment in a vertically related industry. Disclosing information affects an (common) upstream firm’s input price (i.e., vertical strategic effects) and a rival downstream firm’s output level (i.e., horizontal strategic effects). We show that the downstream firm is willing to withhold its information as the products become more differentiated because the horizontal strategic effects decrease with the products differentiation degree. This implies that non-disclosure, rather than disclosure, can convey an aggressive investment (i.e., lower marginal costs) to a rival downstream firm when the products are sufficiently differentiated. Moreover, we show that the downstream firm may disclose its information and pursue its investment at a minimum level when the products are extremely differentiated. In this case, they desire to reveal high marginal costs (i.e., a low investment level) to the upstream firm to reduce the input price, regardless of horizontal market competition.

Investor-State Dispute Settlement and Multinational Firm Behavior

Investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) were supposed to become an integral part of multilateral trade and investment agreements although the partner countries of these deals do not suffer from substantial institutional weakness. This paper shows why multinational firms lobby for ISDS also in this environment beyond the potential compensation an ISDS provision may offer. ISDS makes them more aggressive by increasing cost-reducing investment. Therefore, potential compensations to a foreign investor do not imply a zero-sum game, and competition with a domestic firm does not necessarily help but may imply even more excessive investment.

Yardstick Competition for Multi-Product Hospitals - An Analysis of the Proposed Dutch Yardstick Mechanism

Health care provision is undergoing major reforms in Europe as a reaction to rapidly increasing expenditure and lowered political acceptance to commit public finance to cover the deficits. The Dutch government will decide in 2007 if the current budget system will be replaced by a more competitive mechanism, based on the yardstick regulation principle by Shleifer (1985). One of the proposed systems for the reform can be compared to a revenue-cap implementation of a multi-product cost-yardstick mechanism. The redistribution of the sector’s relevant cost is made in proportion to the individual hospitals share of total weighted output. No regulation is made of the multi-lateral contractual relations between users, insurers and hospitals. The scaling weights are updated periodically for new services and as a function of observed excess demand (waiting lists). The mechanism is shown to provide cost-reducing (effort-inducing) incentives for profit-maximizing rational agents in a single-period bargaining game. The game also shows that the regulation acts as a countervailing power for the insurers to reinforce bargaining power. The local distortion of the output profile induced by the regulation is a function of demand elasticity and cost function convexity. In case the revenue target is not binding, no welfare loss is incurred. The regime also provides incentives for cost-reducing investments in the short and the long run. These incentives manifest themselves in local reallocations of output to more efficient producers. The analysis shows that care should be taken in the updating of the weights as to provide incentives for service innovation, as well as to guarantee convergence of the price system. Although this requires econometric analyses, the alternative with a cost-based yardstick is considered superior to a revenue-based ditto for this application.

Does licensing promote innovation?

ABSTRACTWe analyse the impact of licensing on the equilibrium amount of cost-reducing innovation under several licensing mechanisms in the case of a duopoly model with heterogeneous firms. Under a wide class of licensing mechanisms, we find that as product substitutability increases, the possibility of higher innovation under licensing compared to no licensing decreases. Therefore, firms’ heterogeneity is crucial to assess whether licensing incentivizes or not R&D cost-reducing investments.

Pass-Through of Cost Reductions in Open Auction Markets with Application to Merger Effects

Here we analyze how, in an open procurement auction, cost reductions among suppliers bidding to sell to a buyer affect the payoffs to the buyer and suppliers. When a single supplier enjoys a reduction in cost, its increase in expected payoff is equal to the expected increase in total surplus from the cost reduction. The buyer benefits not by capturing a portion of the increase in surplus but instead gains at the expense of the suppliers who do not enjoy the cost decrease. The buyer's benefit from a cost decrease, increases in the concentration among the suppliers who do not enjoy the cost decrease. These results have implications for vertical integration and merger analysis. Increases in concentration increase the incentive of buyers who are integrated upstream to make cost reducing investments in the supply of the good while the investment incentives of non-integrated suppliers remain unchanged. In terms of merger analysis these results suggest that pass through of merger specific cost savings will be higher if the non-merging firms in the market are more concentrated. In addition, mergers increase the incentives for vertically integrated sellers to make cost reducing investments, which may serve to mitigate the anticompetitive effects of a merger.

Dynamic Efficiency in Experimental Emissions Trading Markets with Investment Uncertainty

This study employs a laboratory experiment to assess the performance of tradable permit markets on dynamic efficiency arising from cost-reducing investment. The permit allocation rule is the main treatment variable, with permits being fully auctioned or grandfathered. The experimental results show significant investment under both allocation rules in the presence of ex ante uncertainty over the actual investment outcome. However, auctioning permits generally provides stronger incentives to invest in R&D, leading to greater dynamic efficiency compared to grandfathering.

Process Innovation, Application Compatibility, and Welfare

We analyze a model of cost-reducing R&D investment and compatibility decisions by two platforms. After an exogenous increase in efficiency of cost-reducing investment (i.e., process innovation), each platform has a heightened incentive to make its software incompatible with the rival's hardware device to avoid being dominated in the hardware market. This can lead to an inefficient market structure. The process innovation has not only a positive direct effect of reducing costs but also a negative indirect effect through the change of the compatibility decisions. In a platform competition, an exogenous improvement in the efficiency of process innovation can be harmful to the profits of all platforms and harmful to social welfare.

Welfare costs of coordinated infrastructure investments: the case of competing transport modes

ABSTRACTInfrastructure investments such as in rail and road networks are often undertaken by different parties that have differing degrees of vertical integration into downstream rolling stock (i.e. train and truck) investments. We analyse the impacts on freight transport and welfare outcomes of different institutional approaches to investment coordination across multiple freight modes (rail and road) in the presence of upstream and downstream cost-reducing investments in each mode. We show that welfare is reduced when a profit-maximising transport infrastructure investor correctly anticipates the advent of a future competing infrastructure. This is because myopically failing to anticipate future competition results in welfare-enhancing over-investment. We further show that presciently anticipating inter-modal competition is not solely responsible for reduced welfare, with additional vertical and horizontal coordination issues also at work. Our model can be applied to a range of applications that deal with multiple competing infrastructure investments.

Recursive Lexicographical Search: Finding All Markov Perfect Equilibria of Finite State Directional Dynamic Games

We define a class of dynamic Markovian games, directional dynamic games (DDG), where directionality is represented by a strategy-independent partial order on the state space. We show that many games are DDGs, yet none of the existing algorithms are guaranteed to find any Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) of these games, much less all of them. We propose a fast and robust generalization of backward induction we call state recursion that operates on a decomposition of the overall DDG into a finite number of more tractable stage games , which can be solved recursively. We provide conditions under which state recursion finds at least one MPE of the overall DDG and introduce a recursive lexicographic search (RLS) algorithm that systematically and efficiently uses state recursion to find all MPE of the overall game in a finite number of steps. We apply RLS to find all MPE of a dynamic model of Bertrand price competition with cost-reducing investments which we show is a DDG. We provide an exact non-iterative algorithm that finds all MPE of every stage game, and prove there can be only 1, 3, or 5 of them. Using the stage games as building blocks, RLS rapidly finds and enumerates all MPE of the overall game. RLS finds a unique MPE for an alternating move version of the leapfrogging game when technology improves with probability 1, but in other cases, and in any simultaneous move version of the game, it finds a huge multiplicity of MPE that explode exponentially as the number of possible cost states increases.

Can More Information About Rivals' Costs Decrease Welfare?

We investigate if more information about rivals' costs increases welfare when firms compete in prices and cost-reducing investment. When firms compete only in prices, a firm sets a higher price under partial information than under complete information if it faces an efficient rival, and a lower price otherwise. Thus, more information redistributes market share from the more efficient to the less efficient firm, with a negative impact on welfare. When firms also compete in cost-reducing investment, more information leads a firm to decrease investment if it faces an efficient rival, and to increase investment otherwise. Welfare decreases if firms are sufficiently asymmetric and their products sufficiently differentiated.

事前の費用削減投資と料金体系：線形料金か、二部料金か

事前の費用削減投資と料金体系：線形料金か、二部料金か

Recursive Lexicographical Search: Finding All Markov Perfect Equilibria of Finite State Directional Dynamic Games

We define a class of dynamic Markovian games that we call directional dynamic games (DDG) in which directionality is represented by a partial order on the state space. We propose a fast and robust state recursion algorithm that can find a Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) via backward induction on the state space of the game. When there are multiple equilibria, this algorithm relies on an equilibrium selection rule (ESR) to pick a particular MPE.We propose a recursive lexicographic search (RLS) algorithm that systematically and efficiently cycles through all feasible ESRs and prove that the RLS algorithm finds all MPE of the overall game. We apply the algorithms to find all MPE of a dynamic duopoly model of Bertrand price competition and cost reducing investments which we show is a DDG. Even with coarse discretization of the state space we find hundreds of millions of MPE in this game.

Sequential Procurement Auctions with Risk-Averse Suppliers

We compare two procurement mechanisms, bundling and unbundling, in a two-stage auction model with risk-averse suppliers. They differ in whether two sequential tasks of investment and production are procured through a single auction or two sequential auctions. Each auction adopts a first-price format. A winner is awarded a fixed-price contract. Each supplier's production cost is affected by two risk factors, aggregate risk and idiosyncratic risk, as well as the cost-reducing investment. The aggregate risk is common to all suppliers, but the idiosyncratic risk is specific to each supplier. A risk-neutral buyer trades off risk sharing, incentive provision, and ex post efficiency of contract allocation. Our main result shows that an increase in the aggregate risk renders bundling less preferable to unbundling, from the viewpoint of both the buyer and the society. The result still holds even if subcontracting is possible under bundling. On the other hand, an increase in the idiosyncratic risk does not necessarily render bundling less preferable to unbundling.

Supplier Encroachment and Investment Spillovers

The conventional wisdom is that a manufacturer's encroachment into the retail space will likely hurt an existing retailer. In contrast to the conventional belief, the current research shows that a retailer may in fact welcome a manufacturer's encroachment despite of new competition in the final market. The encroachment may help the manufacturer have some skin in the game at the retail level which will get it to make a selfish cost-reducing investment that in turn spills over to the retailer. Such a spillover effect enhances the retailer's profit as long as the encroachment does not result in extreme retail competition. The spillover effect is so robust that the retailer's benefit from the encroachment remains even after considering potential mitigating factors such as a manufacturer's decentralized encroachment, additional retail competition, and price competition.

Competition and investment — A unified approach

Using a simple but general two-stage framework, this paper identifies the circumstances under which increasing competition leads to more cost-reducing investments. The framework can, for instance, capture increasing substitutability for different types of oligopoly models or changes from Cournot to Bertrand competition. The paper identifies four transmission mechanisms by which competition affects investment. For a firm with lower initial marginal costs (higher efficiency), a positive effect of competition on investment is more likely. Positive spillovers support a negative effect of competition on investment. The relation between competition and investment is not affected in an unambiguous way by the level of pre-existing competition.