{"title":"Cursed Consumers and the Effectiveness of Consumer Protection Policies*","authors":"Alessandro Ispano, Peter Schwardmann","doi":"10.1111/joie.12332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12332","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We model firms' quality disclosure and pricing in the presence of cursed consumers, who fail to be sufficiently skeptical about undisclosed quality. We show that cursed consumers are exploited in duopoly if firms are vertically differentiated, if there are few cursed consumers, and if average product quality is high. Three common consumer protection policies that work under monopoly, that is, mandatory disclosure, third party disclosure and consumer education, may all increase exploitation and decrease welfare. Even where these policies improve welfare, they often lead to a reduction in consumer surplus. Our conclusions hold in extensions with endogenous quality and horizontal differentiation.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"407-440"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50154930","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Francesco Decarolis, Maris Goldmanis, Antonio Penta, Ksenia Shakhgildyan
{"title":"Bid Coordination in Sponsored Search Auctions: Detection Methodology and Empirical Analysis*","authors":"Francesco Decarolis, Maris Goldmanis, Antonio Penta, Ksenia Shakhgildyan","doi":"10.1111/joie.12331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12331","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Bid delegation to specialized intermediaries is common in internet ad auctions. When the same intermediary bids for competing advertisers, its incentive to coordinate client bids might alter the functioning of the auctions. This study develops a methodology to detect bid coordination and presents a strategy to estimate a bound on the search engine revenue losses imposed by bid coordination. When the method is applied to data from auctions held on a major search engine, coordination is detected in 55% of the cases of delegated bidding and the search engine's revenue loss ranges between 5.3% and 10.4%.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"570-592"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joie.12331","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50153308","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Structural Empirical Model of R&D, Firm Heterogeneity, and Industry Evolution*","authors":"Yanyou Chen, Daniel Yi Xu","doi":"10.1111/joie.12327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12327","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article develops and estimates an industry equilibrium model of the Korean electric motor industry from 1991 to 1996. Plant-level decisions on R&D, physical capital investment, entry, and exit are integrated in a dynamic setting with knowledge spillovers. We apply the novel approximation of oblivious equilibrium to estimate the R&D cost, magnitude of knowledge spillovers, adjustment costs of physical investment, and plant scrap value distribution. Knowledge spillovers are essential to explaining the firm-level productivity evolution and the equilibrium market configuration. A <math>\u0000 <semantics>\u0000 <mrow>\u0000 <mn>15</mn>\u0000 <mo>%</mo>\u0000 </mrow>\u0000 <annotation>$$ 15% $$</annotation>\u0000 </semantics></math> R&D subsidy maximizes industry output and is broadly consistent with a past policy initiative of the Korean government.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"323-353"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50130895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Platform Investment and price parity clauses*","authors":"Chengsi Wang, Julian Wright","doi":"10.1111/joie.12329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12329","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Platforms use price parity clauses to prevent sellers setting lower prices when selling through other channels. They claim these restraints are needed so platforms have incentives to invest in providing search services—without them, consumers would search on the platform but then switch to buy in a cheaper channel. In a model incorporating these effects, we find that wide price parity clauses lead to excessive platform investment while narrow (or no) price parity clauses lead to insufficient platform investment. Taking these investment effects into account, wide price parity clauses lower consumer surplus but have ambiguous effects on total welfare.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"538-569"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joie.12329","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50130894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mixed Oligopoly and Market Power Mitigation: Evidence from the Colombian Wholesale Electricity Market*","authors":"Carlos Suarez","doi":"10.1111/joie.12328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12328","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Using information on price bids in wholesale electricity pools and empirical techniques described in the literature on electricity markets, this study identifies the market power mitigation effect of public firms in the Colombian market. The results suggest that while private firms exercise less market power than is predicted by a profit-maximization model, there are marked differences between private and public firms in their exercise of unilateral market power. These findings support the hypothesis of the market power mitigation effect of public firms.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"354-406"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joie.12328","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50127862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly when Markets are Covered*","authors":"Markus Dertwinkel-Kalt, Christian Wey","doi":"10.1111/joie.12325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12325","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We analyze oligopolistic third-degree price discrimination relative to uniform pricing when markets are covered. Pricing equilibria are critically determined by supply-side features such as the number of firms and their marginal cost differences. It follows that each firm's Lerner index under uniform pricing is equal to the weighted harmonic mean of the firm's relative margins under discriminatory pricing. Uniform pricing then lowers average prices and raises consumer surplus. We can calculate the gain in consumer surplus and loss in firms' profits from uniform pricing based only on the market data of the discriminatory equilibrium (i.e., prices and quantities).</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"464-490"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joie.12325","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50127861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Industry Structure, Segmentation, and Quality Competition in the U.S. Hotel Industry*","authors":"R. Andrew Butters, Thomas N. Hubbard","doi":"10.1111/joie.12330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12330","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine how quality competition affects the relationship between market size and industry structure at the product level using evidence from the U.S. hotel industry. Starting in the early 1980s, quality competition for business travelers became more based on variable and less on fixed costs, and became less scale intensive. Since then, market size increases have been met by more, but smaller, hotels in business travel destinations but continued to be met by larger hotels in personal travel destinations. Our results illustrate how the way consumers benefit from increases in market size depends on how firms compete.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"491-537"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joie.12330","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50119251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Defending Home against Giants: Exclusive Dealing as a Survival Strategy for Local Firms*","authors":"Hiroshi Kitamura, Noriaki Matsushima, Misato Sato","doi":"10.1111/joie.12326","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12326","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We consider exclusive contracts a survival strategy for a local incumbent manufacturer facing a multinational manufacturer's entry. Although both manufacturers prefer to trade with an efficient local distributor, trading with inefficient competitive distributors is acceptable only to the entrant, because of the entrant's efficiency. Hence, such competitive distributors can be an outside option for the entrant. As the entrant becomes efficient, the outside option works effectively, implying that the entry does not considerably benefit the efficient local distributor. Thus, the local manufacturer is more likely to sign an anticompetitive exclusive contract with the efficient distributor as the entrant becomes efficient.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 2","pages":"441-463"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/joie.12326","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50121364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Barbara Kazuń, Krzysztof Kazuń, Joanna Małaczewska, Rafał Kamiński, Dobrochna Adamek-Urbańska, Justyna Sikorska, Jacek Wolnicki, Hubert Szudrowicz
{"title":"Effects of long-term administration of various dietary prebiotic supplements on the growth, immune cell activity and digestive tract histology of juvenile vimba <i>(Vimba vimba)</i>.","authors":"Barbara Kazuń, Krzysztof Kazuń, Joanna Małaczewska, Rafał Kamiński, Dobrochna Adamek-Urbańska, Justyna Sikorska, Jacek Wolnicki, Hubert Szudrowicz","doi":"10.2478/jvetres-2023-0033","DOIUrl":"10.2478/jvetres-2023-0033","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Introduction: </strong>The experiment was set to determine the effects of long-term (55-day) use of three commercial prebiotics including <i>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</i>-derived β-glucans and one including inulin on juvenile vimba <i>(Vimba vimba)</i> reared intensively under controlled conditions.</p><p><strong>Material and methods: </strong>Six-month-old fish were fed commercial feed (Control group, n = 90), or the same feed supplemented with 0.02% Leiber Beta-S (BS group, n = 90), 0.20% Biolex MB40 (MB group, n = 90), 0.30% CeFi (CE group, n = 90) or 1.00% inulin Orafti GR (IN group, n = 90) for 55 days.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>In the BS group, the final growth parameters were significantly lower than in the Control group, while the feed conversion ratio was significantly higher. No significant differences were found between any other group and the Control group in the respective parameters. The respiratory burst activity of the head-kidney phagocytes was significantly lower in all fish groups fed the prebiotic-supplemented diets compared to the Control group. The proliferative response of the head-kidney lymphocytes stimulated by concanavalin A was lower in the BS group than in the Control group, while in other groups this response was not affected. No significant differences were found in histopathological analyses of the digestive tract, liver or pancreas.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The long-term supplementation of fish diets with prebiotics can negatively influence the growth, feed conversion, nonspecific cellular resistance and proliferative activity of the T lymphocytes of vimba juveniles.</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"13 1","pages":"233-241"},"PeriodicalIF":2.7,"publicationDate":"2023-06-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10740321/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91000558","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Simulating Hospital Merger Simulations*","authors":"David J. Balan, Keith Brand","doi":"10.1111/joie.12312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/joie.12312","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We perform a Monte Carlo experiment to assess the performance of three hospital merger simulation methods. Our analysis proceeds as follows: (i) specify a theoretical model of hospital markets and use it to generate “true” price effects for many simulated mergers; (ii) for each simulated merger, generate data of the kind commonly available in real-world merger analysis and apply the simulation methods to those data; and (iii) compare the predictions of the simulation methods to the true price effects. All three simulation methods perform reasonably well. We also develop a method for predicting price effects that extends Garmon [2017].</p>","PeriodicalId":47963,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Industrial Economics","volume":"71 1","pages":"47-123"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50127166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}