相继产业链条件下的内生纵向一体化研究

在由多个上游和下游企业组成的相继产业链中,上下游厂商通过纵向一体化可降低产品价格,增加利润及社会福利.但当企业数目较少时,双重边际效应使得价格增加,同时一体化厂商会提高非一体化厂商成本,形成价格歧视、甚至市场封闭等问题.本文给出一体化厂商与非一体化厂商共存的内生解,并给双重边际、价格歧视和市场封闭的解决途径.     

数据优势会使平台企业提高定价吗？——模型推导与理论分析

数字经济时代,数据成为平台企业的重要生产要素。本文分析了垄断环境与差异化竞争环境下,数据对平台企业定价行为的影响。研究结果表明：在垄断环境下,数据会降低平台企业产品或服务的价格;差异化竞争环境下,数据的丰富使市场中的平台企业可以自发地形成两种定价方式：对于为主流领域提供产品或服务的企业而言,数据会使其提高价格获取利润,而对于面临长尾需求的企业而言,数据会使其降低价格,采取"薄利多销"的手段获取利润。同时,本文也提出了对数据优势作用的进一步思考——数据有助于完全价格歧视的实现与产生新价格歧视场景;数据有助于企业识别自身特征,进一步使平台市场自发形成"主流层次"与"长尾层次"两个层次;数据有弱化市场势力的作用。     

基于报童模型的两级供应链回购契约协调研究

研究具有单一供应商和单一销售商的供应链系统回购契约协调机制。分析了报童模型下两级供应链双边际化效应,建立了基于报童模型的分散式系统、集中式系统的供应商、销售商利润模型,讨论了如何通过回购契约来消除"双边际化效应"。结果表明:回购契约的采用使批发价格比不采用契约时的批发价格低,且使订货量增加,从而使供应链的总利润增加,并且减少了缺货带来的损失,同时更好的满足了顾客需要。最终实现了独立个体最优决策与系统最优决策一致化的供应链协调。     

Prices,Markups, and Trade Reform

This paper examines how prices, markups, and marginal costs respond to trade liberalization. We develop a framework to estimate markups from production data with multi‐product firms. This approach does not require assumptions on the market structure or demand curves faced by firms, nor assumptions on how firms allocate their inputs across products. We exploit quantity and price information to disentangle markups from quantity‐based productivity, and then compute marginal costs by dividing observed prices by the estimated markups. We use India's trade liberalization episode to examine how firms adjust these performance measures. Not surprisingly, we find that trade liberalization lowers factory‐gate prices and that output tariff declines have the expected pro‐competitive effects. However, the price declines are small relative to the declines in marginal costs, which fall predominantly because of the input tariff liberalization. The reason for this incomplete cost pass‐through to prices is that firms offset their reductions in marginal costs by raising markups. Our results demonstrate substantial heterogeneity and variability in markups across firms and time and suggest that producers benefited relative to consumers, at least immediately after the reforms.     

Promotional pricing and online business model choice in the presence of retail competition

Online promotional channels provided by competitive conventional reselling or novel agency selling e-tailers are widely used by firms to stimulate significant sales in retail. Compared with reselling, agency selling gives firms the power to directly control prices, but it involves costly platform fees. Given the unique features of the reselling and agency selling business models, we develop game theoretic models to explore how the firm and e-tailers, under consideration of retail competition, should strategically use these two business models in promotion. Our analysis generates several insights. We demonstrate that the agency selling model might lead to a higher price than the reselling model, a result contrary to the double marginalization. We also present that without retail competition, there exists a “win-win” promotional strategy, which is also a Pareto-optimal situation for the firm and e-tailer. Specifically, this situation occurs when the e-tailer is in the reselling model under a moderate inventory level or in the agency selling model with a moderate platform fee under a high inventory level. However, under conditions of competitive e-tailers, both e-tailers being in the reselling model is no longer a “win-win” promotional strategy, while the hybrid selling model, i.e., one in the reselling model and the other in the agency selling model, can generate a Pareto improvement. In addition, low platform fees, customers’ high price sensitivities, increased selling costs or decreased competitive intensities will drive supply chain participants to seek direct pricing power in the agency selling model.     

Quality‐Speed Competition in Customer‐Intensive Services with Boundedly Rational Customers

We consider a system in which two competing servers provide customer‐intensive services and the service reward is affected by the length of service time. The customers are boundedly rational and choose their service providers according to a logit model. We demonstrate that the service provider revenue function is unimodal in the service rate, its decision variable, and show that the service rate competition has a unique and stable equilibrium. We then study the price decision under three scenarios with the price determined by a revenue‐maximizing firm, a welfare‐maximizing social planner, or two servers in competition. We find that the socially optimal price, subject to the requirement that the customer actual utility must be non‐negative, is always lower than the competition equilibrium price which, in turn, is lower than the revenue‐maximizing monopoly price. However, if the customer actual utility is allowed to be negative in social optimization, the socially optimal price can be higher than the other two prices in a large market.     

Sales Force and Competition in Financial Product Markets: The Case of Mexico's Social Security Privatization

This paper examines how sales force impacts competition and equilibrium prices in the context of a privatized pension market. We use detailed administrative data on fund manager choices and worker characteristics at the inception of Mexico's privatized social security system, where fund managers had to set prices (management fees) at the national level, but could select sales force levels by local geographic areas. We develop and estimate a model of fund manager choice where sales force can increase or decrease customer price sensitivity. We find exposure to sales force lowered price sensitivity, leading to inelastic demand and high equilibrium fees. We simulate oft proposed policy solutions: a supply‐side policy with a competitive government player and a demand‐side policy that increases price elasticity. We find that demand‐side policies are necessary to foster competition in social safety net markets with large segments of inelastic consumers.     

市场竞争模式下的技术溢出与技术创新分析

技术溢出的存在是技术创新市场失效的主要原因.本文通过构建技术溢出下的企业产品市场竞争模型,比较研究了产品市场产量竞争和价格竞争模式下技术溢出与技术创新.分析表明,在均衡时,技术溢出总会发生,价格竞争模式相对于产量竞争模式的技术创新激励得到加强,在价格竞争下技术创新激励几乎不会被创新溢出所影响.结果还表明,价格竞争是可取的,它将带来社会总福利的增加.     

Money in Search Equilibrium,in Competitive Equilibrium,and in Competitive Search Equilibrium

We compare three market structures for monetary economies: bargaining (search equilibrium); price taking (competitive equilibrium); and price posting (competitive search equilibrium). We also extend work on the microfoundations of money by allowing a general matching technology and entry. We study how equilibrium and the effects of policy depend on market structure. Under bargaining, trade and entry are both inefficient, and inflation implies first‐order welfare losses. Under price taking, the Friedman rule solves the first inefficiency but not the second, and inflation may actually improve welfare. Under posting, the Friedman rule yields the first best, and inflation implies second‐order welfare losses.     

引入自有产品对零售商主导的供应链成员决策的影响

随着零售市场竞争的日益激烈,越来越多的零售商采用自有产品营销战略。在零售商处于主导地位的供应链中,本文首先假设消费者对品牌产品的估值服从均匀分布,分别在一体化、分散式和协调式供应链系统下给出了零售商引入自有产品的条件,分析了其对双方决策和利润的影响。随后,本文假设消费者对品牌产品的估值服从正态分布,通过算例分析了引入自有产品对双方决策和利润的影响。研究表明,零售商提供自有产品作为一种策略,迫使制造商降低品牌产品的批发价格,削弱因双方独立决策而导致的“双重边际效应”,使得他在分散式供应链和协调式供应链中都能获利,但对制造商总是不利。在正态分布的情形下,引入自有产品在分散式供应链中对制造商有利,但在协调式供应链系统中,对制造商不利。     

Coordinating a Supply Chain System with Retailers Under Both Price and Inventory Competition

We investigate a supply chain system with a common supplier selling to downstream retailers who are engaged in both price and inventory competition. We establish the existence and uniqueness of the pure‐strategy Nash equilibrium for the retailer game and study how a supplier can coordinate the system to achieve the best performance. Our main conclusions are as follows: First, a buyback contract can be used to coordinate retailers competing on both price and inventory in a sense that optimal retail prices and inventory levels arise as the Pareto‐dominant equilibrium. With symmetric retailers, the system optimum arises as the unique symmetric equilibrium. Second, the particular type of competition experienced by retailers (price versus inventory competition) affects the characteristics of the contract. Specifically, strong price competition leads to a coordination mechanism with a positive buyback rate, where the supplier subsidizes retailers for leftover inventories; however, strong inventory competition leads to a negative buyback rate, where retailers are punished for overstocking. Using a linear expected demand function, we further explore the impact of system parameters on the coordination contract and the competitive equilibrium. We also find that the performance of the supplier's optimal contract is asymptotic to the system optimal coordination contract as competition becomes fierce.     

中国电力市场长期产业组织架构与电价趋势研究

为了分析售电侧电力市场化改革背景下中国电力市场长期产业组织架构形态和均衡电价变动趋势,本文根据售电公司在电力批发市场和零售市场的双边讨价还价博弈行为,构建了长期模式下独立售电公司、寄生公司和电力批发商三者之间的两阶段Stackelberg博弈模型,结合博弈的均衡状态,比较分析了长期和短期改革效果,并进一步讨论了均衡电价的影响因素和变动情况。结果表明：（1）长期电力市场的均衡批发电价低于完全垄断时期的均衡批发电价,售电侧放开对于降电价效果明显。（2）在改革效果方面,相较于短期改革而言,竞争性的长期改革形态更加有效,长期均衡电价和均衡批发电价随贴现率的波动小于短期,市场更加稳定。（3）在政策实施层面,随着改革推进和竞争程度增加,调整对象从电力批发商逐步过渡到售电公司,有助于保障售电市场竞争的公平和效率。     

Does a Store Brand Always Hurt the Manufacturer of a Competing National Brand?

It is generally believed that store brands hurt the manufacturers of competing national brands while benefiting retailers. In this study, we challenge this notion by studying the impacts of a store brand when it is introduced by a power retailer. We show that a store brand may benefit the manufacturer when the interaction between the manufacturer and retailer is modeled as a retailer‐led Stackelberg game. This phenomenon occurs because the store brand changes the nature of the strategic interaction between the manufacturer and retailer in our model. In particular, while the interaction is always vertical strategic substitutability without a store brand, it may become vertical strategic independence with one. With the store brand, the demand for the national brand becomes larger, and the wholesale price for the national brand may increase, both of which benefit the manufacturer. Finally, the store brand may lessen the double marginalization problem of the supply chain for the national brand in the retailer‐led Stackelberg game, but does so in an unconventional way: The reduction in the double marginalization effect may come from a lowered retail markup instead of a lowered wholesale price. Our results reconcile some discrepancies between theoretical predictions and empirical findings regarding the impacts of store brands on manufacturers.     

Channel Structure Design for Complementary Products under a Co‐Opetitive Environment

In the high‐tech industry, firms can be partners in one respect (e.g., resellers) and competitors in another. In this article, we investigate the channel structure problem for two firms‐each selling competing products in two complementary markets—who are deciding whether to sell their products to customers directly or distribute one of them through a competitor. The customers are heterogeneous and both firms have products that are horizontally differentiated. When selling products directly, the firm can coordinate the prices of the two complementary products and avoid the inefficiency of double marginalization. However, selling (indirectly) through the competing manufacturer can mitigate competition because the competitor shares the profit of both competing products and therefore does not price its own products aggressively. One might expect that when the externality across the markets is strong, firms would prefer to sell both products directly (rather than through the competitor) in order to take advantage of the complementarity between markets and eliminate the inefficiency of double marginalization. Interestingly, we find that even though the first mover chooses to sell both products directly, the second mover forsakes the opportunity to coordinate the prices of its products and instead opts to distribute one of the products through the first mover.     

不同交叉销售结构情境下竞争供应链运营决策研究

不同的销售主体可以销售不同的产品数量。考虑竞争供应链系统由两个制造商和两个零售商组成,下游每个零售商都可以选择垂直上游制造商或者对方的制造商进行产品订购,构建了排他性、单交叉和双交叉三种销售模型,研究不同的竞争强度如何影响零售商订货策略、制造商批发价格和系统绩效。结果表明,当纵向竞争强度不变时,排他性销售下供应链的系统利润随着横向竞争强度的增大而逐渐减小,单交叉销售下供应链的系统利润随着横向竞争强度的增大而逐渐增大。而双交叉销售下供应链的系统利润的变化不仅与横向竞争有关,而且也与纵向竞争相关。     

Individual Heterogeneity and Average Welfare

Individual heterogeneity is an important source of variation in demand. Allowing for general heterogeneity is needed for correct welfare comparisons. We consider general heterogeneous demand where preferences and linear budget sets are statistically independent. Only the marginal distribution of demand for each price and income is identified from cross‐section data where only one price and income is observed for each individual. Thus, objects that depend on varying price and/or income for an individual are not generally identified, including average exact consumer surplus. We use bounds on income effects to derive relatively simple bounds on the average surplus, including for discrete/continuous choice. We also sketch an approach to bounding surplus that does not use income effect bounds. We apply the results to gasoline demand. We find tight bounds for average surplus in this application, but wider bounds for average deadweight loss.     

基于电子市场的供应链双渠道冲突与协调的契约设计

研究了一个制造商通过传统零售渠道销售产品的同时开辟网上直销渠道,采取混合双渠道来销售产品的供应链渠道结构。从分析消费者效用出发,建立了双渠道环境下需求依赖价格变化的需求函数,运用博弈论建立决策模型。结果表明制造商在保持传统渠道的同时,开辟电子渠道将导致传统零售商的市场份额减少,利润降低,引起渠道冲突。为了解决混合双渠道的冲突和协调,设计了批发价加电子渠道价格的合同实现了双渠道供应链的协调,通过改进的收入共享契约不但实现了双渠道供应链的协调,而且实现了开辟电子渠道后供应链各成员利润的帕累托改进,从而实现了供应链双渠道冲突的协调问题。     

Improving Valuation Under Consumer Search: Implications for Pricing and Profits

There is a growing trend in the retail industry to improve customer experience. In this article, we study retailer‐initiated strategies to increase consumer valuation for a product under duopoly. In such a setting, it is possible that a consumer's valuation may be increased by one retailer; however, the consumer may decide to buy the product from the competitor. We consider a two‐stage game where retailers first decide whether to invest in improvements in customer valuation and then engage in price competition. We computationally explore the Nash equilibria in terms of both investment and pricing. We find that in the majority of cases retailers price in a manner to discourage their local customers to buy from the competitor. Next, we focus on the pricing game and theoretically characterize the pricing Nash equilibrium. We find that a retailer could overcome competitive effects by improving consumer valuation beyond a certain threshold. We also find that a retailer who does not invest could benefit from competition in situations where his competitor increases consumer valuation beyond a threshold. Finally, we explore through a computational study the Nash equilibria of the two‐stage game using an alternate model to establish the robustness of our findings.     

Supply Chain Design and Carbon Penalty: Monopoly vs. Monopolistic Competition

This paper studies whether imposing carbon costs changes the supply chain structure and social welfare. We explore the problem from a central policymaker's perspective who wants to maximize social welfare. We consider two stakeholders, retailers, and consumers, who optimize their own objectives (i.e., profits and net utility) and three competitive settings (i.e., monopoly, monopolistic competition with symmetric market share, and monopolistic competition with asymmetric market share). For the monopoly case, we find that when the retailer's profit is high, imposing some carbon emission charges on the retailer and the consumers does not substantially change the supply chain structure or the social welfare. However, when the retailer's profit is low, imposing carbon costs optimally can lead to a significant increase in social welfare. Moreover, the impact of imposing carbon emission charges becomes more significant when the degree of competition increases. Additionally, the quantum of benefit may depend only on factors common across industries, such as fuel and carbon costs.     

The experience effect and pricing for agricultural products

It has been found that for a wide range of industrial products the unit prices and costs decrease by a constant percentage when production volume doubles—this is called the experience effect. This unit price behaviour is also observed for certain classes of basic agricultural products. As international market competition increases, price behaviour differences among countries may lead farmers, their organizations and governments to better understand what are the causes of the differences so that they can maintain and improve their competitive position internationally.