High-cost Firms Research Articles

The Unilateral Incentives for Technology Transfers: Predation By Proxy

In 1984 GM and Toyota began the joint production of automobiles to much controversy over its anti-competitive effects. The argument for the joint production was the considerable efficiency gains GM would obtain. Since then, the anti-trust controversy has died, but a question remains: Why would the most efficient manufacturer (Toyota) transfer to its largest rival the knowledge to transform itself into a very efficient rival? We examine when such transfers could be unilaterally profitable, finding that it can serve as a credible way to make the market more competitive, forcing high cost firms to exit (or preventing future entry). This is not without a cost to Toyota since such a transfer also makes the remaining rivals more efficient. Despite this, we find a sufficient (but not necessary) condition for it to be profitable to predate by proxy: The market satisfies an entry equilibrium condition. Further, we find that it is then optimal to predate on every firm that is vulnerable and so a market with many firms can become a duopoly. Profitable predation implies higher prices, to the detriment of consumers. Yet the improved production efficiency outweighs this loss, resulting enhanced social welfare. In contrast, profitable non-predatory joint production (or technology transfers) may reduce welfare. Paradoxically, the potential for predation could encourage entry ex ante.

Financial Market Integration and the Value of Global Diversification: Evidence from US Acquirers in Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions

In contrast to the previously documented cross-border discount, we find that there is positive cross-border effect for U.S. acquirers during late 1990's and early 2000's. Especially those that acquire/merge with targets from segmented financial markets experience significantly higher positive abnormal returns than those with targets from integrated financial markets. Furthermore, firms acquiring segmented market targets are also characterized by significantly higher post-merger operating performance improvement. The results indicate that the observed positive cross-border effect is mainly due to the increase of the transactions involving targets from segmented markets, in which average firms experience financial constraints. We suggest that value is created by a combination of firms with different financial market integration status, in which funds are provided to high cost firms. Furthermore, the fact that the value creation is even higher within the group of firms with lower costs of capital supports our conjecture.

Price Interventions in a Cournot Oligopoly with a Dominant Firm

We study a Cournot oligopoly with one low-cost (dominant) firm and one or more high-cost (subordinate) firms. If the equilibrium is interior, with all firms producing positive quantity, a reallocation of production relative to the equilibrium point, such that the dominant firm produces more, while the subordinate firms produce less, can increase consumers' surplus, as well as joint firm profit. We show that a price intervention (either a price floor or a fixed price) may help achieve such an improvement. The result hinges on the dominant firm having sufficiently low cost relative to the subordinate firms.

Opportunity Costs, Competition, and Firm Selection

The paper questions the standard economic assumptions that competing economic agents have identical reservation utility levels, and that when differences in opportunity costs exist, they can be conveniently represented by fixed costs. Asymmetries in opportunity costs are considered in relation to current efficiency. The effect of this interchangeability of skills is studied in the context of the effect of entry on firm selection in a Cournot setting. It is found that inefficient firms are more likely to crowd out efficient ones when the relationship between current efficiency and opportunity costs is strong, and when the fixed costs of changing markets are high. Moreover, in the long-run, firms with intermediate cost levels are likely to induce the exit of low and high cost firms. The model sheds light on the benefits of diversification by multiproduct and multinational firms, and their relationship to skill transferability.

Competing for Customers in a Social Network (R)

There are many situations in which a customer's proclivity to buy the product of any firm depends not only on the classical attributes oft he product such as its price and quality, but also on who else is buying the same product. We model these situations as games in which firms compete for customers located in a social network. Nash Equilibrium (NE) in pure strategies exist in general. In the quasi-linear version of the model, NE turn out to be unique and can be precisely characterized. If there are no a priori biases between customers and firms, then there is a cut-off level above which high cost firms are blockaded at an NE, while the rest compete uniformly throughout the network. We also explore the relation between the connectivity of a customer and the money firms spend on him. This relation becomes particularly transparent when externalities are dominant: NE can be characterized in terms of the invariant measures on the recurrent classes of the Markov chain underlying the social network. Finally we consider convex (instead of linear) cost functions for the firms. Here NE need not be unique as we show via an example. But uniqueness is restored if there is enough competition between firms or if their valuations of clients are anonymous.

Price Interventions in Cournot Oligopoly with a Dominant Firm

We study a dominant firm Cournot oligopoly, with one low-cost firm and one or more high-cost firms. If equilibrium is interior, with all firms producing positive quantity, a reallocation of production relative to the equilibrium point, such that the low-cost firm produces more, while the high-cost firms produce less, can increase consumers' surplus, as well as joint firm profit. A price intervention (either a price floor or a fixed price) may help achieve such an improvement.

The ethical economy and competitive markets: Reconciling altruistic, moralistic, and ethical behavior with the rational economic agent and competitive markets

Contrary to some of the leading critiques of neoclassical theory, I argue that this theoretical framework can incorporate the moral dimension into the modeling of economic agents when the consequences of their choices are not answerable to market forces. Neoclassical theory, broadly defined, simply stresses the potential trade-off that exists between altruistic or ethical behavior and the material well-being of the individual. Nevertheless, the behavioral assumptions of neoclassical theory are too narrow to deal with the potential ramifications of introducing the moral dimension into the objective function of workers, managers and owners. The conventional wisdom predicts that moral or ethical firms cannot survive in a competitive market since it is assumed that such firms must produce at relatively higher unit costs. However, higher cost firms can survive as demand is restructured towards the output of the relatively ethical firms. Moreover, modifying mainstream economic theory by introducing more realistic behavioral assumptions into the modeling of the economic agent allows for the simultaneous survival over time of both unethical and ethical firms that are cost competitive and profitable. These revisions of the conventional wisdom have important implications for public policy as well as for an understanding of the actual scope that is afforded to firm decision makers with regards to altruistic or ethical behavior.

A signaling motive for self-regulation in the shadow of coercion

There are many activities which, whilst not regulated now, may be subject to regulation in the future. Firms with high potential compliance costs can use voluntary self-regulatory behavior now to signal their type, and so secure lenient treatment should regulation arise in the future. The performance of self-regulators may deteriorate when regulation is imposed. The prediction that high cost firms will self-regulate has novel implications. More generally, it can be thought of as a model of voluntary private provision of a public good in a world in which private provision may later become mandatory.

Selective penalization of polluters: an inf-convolution approach

We consider an asymmetric polluting oligopoly. We demonstrate that optimal tax rates per unit of emission are not the same for all firms. We call this property selective penalization. Our Optimal Distortion Theorem states that the efficient tax structure requires that high cost firms pay a higher tax rate. Our Pro-concentration Motive Theorem states that optimal taxes increase the concentration of the industry, as measured by the Herfindahl index. Our Magnification Effect indicates that the variance of marginal costs is magnified by a factor which depends on the marginal cost of public funds.

Opportunity Costs, Competition, and Firm Selection

The paper questions the standard economic assumptions that competing economic agents have identical reservation utility levels, and that when differences in opportunity costs exist, they can be conveniently represented by fixed costs. Asymmetries in opportunity costs are considered in relation to current efficiency. The effect of this interchangeability of skills is studied in the context of the effect of entry on firm selection in a Cournot setting. It is found that inefficient firms are more likely to crowd out efficient ones when the relationship between current efficiency and opportunity costs is strong, and when the fixed costs of changing markets are high. Moreover, in the long-run, firms with intermediate cost levels are likely to induce the exit of low and high cost firms. The model sheds light on the benefits of diversification by multiproduct and multinational firms, and their relationship to skill transferability.

Stopping Above-Cost Predatory Pricing

Since 1993 when the Supreme Court decided Brooke Group, no predatory pricing plaintiff has prevailed in a final determination in the federal courts. This decision was the ultimate triumph of the Chicago School antitrust scholars and judges like Frank Easterbrook, who have argued that predation is like dragons and that there is no sufficient reason for antitrust law or the courts to take it seriously. This article argues, however, that the Court's reading of the law is unduly narrow and should be revisited. There is no compelling reason to restrict predation cases to below-cost pricing, as above-cost pricing can also hurt consumers by limiting competition. Consider, for example, the current DOJ case against American Airlines. Like other major air carriers, American has tremendous cost and other advantages at flying passengers into and out of its hub. Under existing interpretations of the Sherman Act, American can price very high, so high that entry would be attractive to even higher cost firms, except that once they do enter, American can use its advantages to make sure that entrants lose money without American losing money. Firms that anticipate this behavior will not enter, and so if such behavior is not deemed predatory, consumers may suffer very high prices without entry. This article proposes an interpretation of Sherman Act section 2 that would give monopolies the incentive to price low in the first place, before entry, because under this interpretation they are not allowed to drive firms from the market after entry.

Evolution to equilibrium in an asymmetric oligopoly with differentiated goods

We present results on finite population evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) and stochastically stable states for a model of evolution with an imitative rule of strategy choice in an asymmetric oligopoly with differentiated goods and two groups of firms, one group of low cost firms and one of high cost firms. The firms play price setting and quantity setting oligopoly games under linear demand functions. We will show that the stochastically stable state in a price setting oligopoly and that in a quantity setting oligopoly coincide.

Stopping Above-Cost Predatory Pricing

Since 1993 when the Supreme Court decided Brooke Group, no predatory pricing plaintiff has prevailed in a final determination in the federal courts. This decision was the ultimate triumph of the Chicago School antitrust scholars and judges like Frank Easterbrook, who have argued that predation is like dragons and that there is no sufficient reason for antitrust law or the courts to take it seriously. This article argues, however, that the Court's reading of the law is unduly narrow and should be revisited. There is no compelling reason to restrict predation cases to below-cost pricing, as above-cost pricing can also hurt consumers by limiting competition. Consider, for example, the current DOJ case against American Airlines. Like other major air carriers, American has tremendous cost and other advantages at flying passengers into and out of its hub. Under existing interpretations of the Sherman Act, American can price very high, so high that entry would be attractive to even higher cost firms, except that once they do enter, American can use its advantages to make sure that entrants lose money without American losing money. Firms that anticipate this behavior will not enter, and so if such behavior is not deemed predatory, consumers may suffer very high prices without entry. This article proposes an interpretation of Sherman Act section 2 that would give monopolies the incentive to price low in the first place, before entry, because under this interpretation they are not allowed to drive firms from the market after entry.

Optimal Collusion with Private Information

We analyze collusion in an infinitely repeated Bertrand game, where prices are publicly observed and each firm receives a privately observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period. Productive efficiency is possible only if high-cost firms relinquish market share. In the most profitable collusive schemes, firms implement productive efficiency, and high-cost firms are favored with higher expected market share in future periods. If types are discrete, there exists a discount factor strictly less than one above which first-best profits can be attained using history-dependent reallocation of market share between equally efficient firms. We also analyze the role of communication and side-payments.

The Effect of Cost Heterogeneity in the Success and Failure of the New Deal's Agricultural and Industrial Programs

The Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) were cornerstones of the early New Deal, designed to cartelize agriculture and industry. When the Supreme Court annulled both acts, agricultural regulation was reinstalled within 6 weeks, following organized lobbying by farming interests, but broad industrial regulation was not reinstated. There was no corresponding lobby effort by industry to return the NIRA. To explain these differences we analyze the effect of farm/firm cost heterogeneities within commodity programs and industries on the ability of the parties to agree to and adhere to collusive regulations. We find that in the case of agriculture, because agricultural pricing and production policies were designed and implemented by low-cost producers, they were relatively self-enforcing and long-lasting. In contrast, high-cost firms in industry played a major role in setting prices and output within many of the NRA industrial codes. Consequently, these collusive policies were not self-enforcing and failed to create an effective lobby for their reinstatement.

Product liability, entry incentives and market structure

The article characterizes the entry incentives provided by increases in product liability under various forms of competition. It is demonstrated that the entry of small, high-cost firms is likely to occur in imperfectly competitive markets when the average damage increases with industry output. Special cases are considered, including Cournot–Nash oligopoly and dominant firm-competitive fringe.

Optimal Collusion with Private Information

We consider an infinitely-repeated Bertrand game, in which prices are perfectly observed and each firm receives a privately-observed, i.i.d. cost shock in each period. Productive efficiency is possible only if high-cost firms are willing to relinquish market share. In the most profitable collusive schemes, firms implement productive efficiency, and high-cost firms are favored with higher expected market share in future periods. If types are discrete, there exists a discount factor strictly less than one above which first-best profits can be attained purely through history-dependent reallocation of market share between equally-efficient firms. We provide further characterizations and several computational examples. We next examine different institutional features. We find that firms may find explicit communication (smoke-filled rooms) about costs beneficial after some histories but not others. We show that if firm-level behavior is not publicly observable, the best collusive scheme sacrifices all productive efficiency. Finally, if firms can make explicit side-payments and these entail any inefficiency (e.g., if they are illegal and bear some risk of detection), then optimal collusive equilibria are non-stationary and thus involve the use of future market-share favors.

Can High Prices Ensure Product Quality When Buyers do not Know the Sellers' Cost?

The Klein-Leffler (1981) model of product quality does not explain why high-quality firms would dissipate the rents they earn from quality-assuring price premia, and it relies on consumers knowing the cost functions of firms. In the present paper, consumers do not know any firm's cost of producing quality goods, so high-quality firms must engage in conspicuous spending to demonstrate they earn a profitable mark-up over cost. Complete rent dissipation occurs only when high and low cost firms have the same cost of producing low quality.

Long run equilibria in an asymmetric oligopoly

Consider an oligopolistic industry composed of two groups (or populations) of firms, the low cost firms and the high cost firms. The firms produce a homogeneous good. I study the finite population evolutionarily stable strategy defined by Schaffer (1988), and the long run equilibrium in the stochastic evolutionary dynamics based on imitation and experimentation of strategies by firms in each group. I will show the following results. 1) The finite population evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) output is equal to the competitive (or Walrasian) output in each group of the firms. 2) Under the assumption that the marginal cost is increasing, the ESS state is the long run equilibrium in the stochastic evolutionary dynamics in the limit as the output grid step, which will be defined in the paper, approaches to zero.

97/03400 Energy and GDP analysis of OECD countries

In this paper, a spatial price equilibrium model developed to shed new light on the economic impact of restrictive trade sanctions adopted in the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute. Mixed complementarity programming is used to solve a 21-region, global trade model that is calibrated to 2011 observed bilateral trade flows using positive mathematical programming. In addition, the model employs a mechanism for analyzing the effects of the tariff rate quota used in the 2006 Softwood Lumber Agreement (SLA). It is estimated that the SLA created an annual deadweight loss of $28 million, paid by U.S. consumers. The quota constrained Alberta lumber producers while BC producers had excess quota. The lack of a proper mechanism for capturing quota rent, such as a tradable quota scheme or quota auction resulted in the survival of high-cost firms, perhaps to the detriment of lower-cost firms in Alberta. In the absence of SLA, it is estimated that Alberta would supply an additional 9% of Canadian softwood lumber to the U.S., eroding the supply share of all other regions while improving aggregate welfare.