We develop an aggregative games approach to study oligopolistic price competition with multiproduct firms. We introduce a new class of IIA demand systems, derived from discrete/continuous choice, and nesting CES and logit demands. The associated pricing game with multiproduct firms is aggregative and a firm's optimal price vector can be summarized by a uni‐dimensional sufficient statistic, the ι‐markup. We prove existence of equilibrium using a nested fixed‐point argument, and provide conditions for equilibrium uniqueness. In equilibrium, firms may choose not to offer some products. We analyze the pricing distortions and provide monotone comparative statics. Under (nested) CES and logit demands, another aggregation property obtains: All relevant information for determining a firm's performance and competitive impact is contained in that firm's uni‐dimensional type. We extend the model to nonlinear pricing, quantity competition, general equilibrium, and demand systems with a nest structure. Finally, we discuss applications to merger analysis and international trade.
Limited information is the key element generating price dispersion in models of homogeneous-goods markets. We show that the global relationship between information and price dispersion is an inverse-U shape. We test this mechanism for the retail gasoline market using a new measure of information based on commuter data from Austria. Commuters sample gasoline prices on their commuting route, providing us with spatial variation in the share of informed consumers. Our empirical estimates are in line with the theoretical predictions. We also quantify how information affects average prices paid and the distribution of surplus in the gasoline market.
We propose a model of two-tier competition between vertically integrated firms and unintegrated downstream firms. We show that, even when integrated firms compete in prices to offer a homogeneous input, the Bertrand result may not obtain, and the input may be priced above marginal cost in equilibrium, which is detrimental to consumers' surplus and social welfare. We obtain that these partial foreclosure equilibria are more likely to exist when downstream competition is fierce. We then use our model to assess the impact of several regulatory tools in the telecommunications industry.Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: L13, L51.
We thank seminar participants at the London School of Economics for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through CRC TR 224. The first author also thanks the European Research Council (ERC) for generous financial support through grant no. 313623. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
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