creator: Konishi, Hideo
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The Unilateral Incentives for Technology Transfers: Predation by Proxy
description- – 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.
- – WP677
- – 2007-09-29
- – application/pdf
Contributing or Free-Riding? A Theory of Endogenous Lobby Formation
description- – We consider a two-stage public goods provision game: In the first stage, players simultaneously decide if they will join a contribution group or not. In the second stage, players in the contribution group simultaneously offer contribution schemes in order to influence the government's choice on the level of provision of public goods. Using perfectly coalition-proof Nash equilibrium (Bernheim, Peleg and Whinston, 1987 JET), we show that the set of equilibrium outcomes is equivalent to an"intuitive"hybrid solution concept, the free-riding-proof core, which is always nonempty but does not necessarily achieve global efficiency. It is not necessarily true that an equilibrium lobby group is formed by the players with highest willingness-to-pay, nor is it a consecutive group with respect to their willingnesses-to-pay. We also show that the equilibrium level of public goods provision shrinks to zero as the economy is replicated.
- – WP681
- – 2008-02-07
- – application/pdf
The Endogenous Formation of a City: Population Agglomeration and Marketplaces in a Location-Specific Production Economy
description- – Much of the literature on the endogenous generation of a city employs increasing returns to scale in order to obtain agglomeration. In contrast, the model considered here focuses on the role of marketplaces or trading centers in the agglomeration of population as cities. Gains to trade in combination with transportation and marketplace setup costs suffice to endogenously generate a city or cities with one or multiple marketplaces. It is assumed that consumers are fully mobile while production functions are location-specific. The exchange of commodities takes place in competitive markets at the marketplaces, while the number and locations of the marketplaces are determined endogenously using a core concept. Unlike the standard literature of urban economics, our model can deal with differences in geography by letting the setup costs of marketplaces and the transportation system depend on location. After showing that an equilibrium exists and that equilibrium allocations are the same as core allocations, we investigate the equilibrium number and locations of marketplaces, the population distribution, and land prices. In contrast with earlier literature, the results are general in the sense that specific functional forms are not needed to obtain existence of equilibrium, equilibria are first best, and equilibria are locally unique (in our examples).
- – WP451
- – 2000-01-28
- – application/pdf
Existence of Stationary Equilibrium in the Markets for New and Used Durable Goods
description- – We prove the existence of stationary equilibrium in the primary and secondhand markets for an indivisible consumer durable in a general model with stochastic degradation and endogenous scrappage decisions. Unlike Rust (1985), we introduce transaction costs in the model as a motivation for consumer holdings of durables across multiple quality levels. In addition, we allow for multiple types of durables (e.g., Porsche and BMW). Since we use a fixed point theorem in making the existence argument, we do not need to invoke the single-crossing property on consumer tastes.
- – WP450
- – 2000-01-28
- – application/pdf
Migration-Proof Tiebout Equilibrium: Existence and Asymptotic Efficiency
description- – Tiebout's basic claim was that when public goods are local there is an equilibrium and every equilibrium is efficient. The literature seems fall short of verifying this conjecture: If the notion of equilibrium is too weak then equilibrium is nonempty yet some equilibria could be inefficient. On the other hand, if the notion of equilibrium is too strong, then every equilibrium is efficient yet equilibrium may be empty. This paper introduces a new equilibrium notion, a \textit{migration-proof Tiebout equilibrium}, which is a jurisdiction structure such that (i) no consumer wants to migrate unilaterally across jurisdictions (free mobility of consumers), and (ii) no subgroup of consumers want to form a new jurisdiction that would not create instability in population distribution (free entry of migration-proof jurisdictions). We show that there is always a unique migration-proof equilibrium and is asymptotically efficient when consumers are homogeneous.
- – WP452
- – 2000-12-01
- – application/pdf
Expanding Demand through Price Advertisement
description- – Price advertisement by retail stores is pervasive. If there exist non-negligible costs of consumer search, a retailer can increase the number of consumers visiting its location by advertising a low price, thus increasing consumers' expected utilities from search. If the increase in the number of consumers who visit the store is substantial, then the store's profit goes up even though low prices decrease profit margins. We show that this intuition extends to the case of a multi-product monopolist, who may choose to advertise very low prices for a limited number of items it carries, even when advertised and non-advertised commodities are substitutes. Finally, we analyze a retail duopoly in which both stores sell from the same location, showing that under some circumstances, there is an incentive for one of the retailers to free-ride on the other's advertisement.
- – WP453
- – 2001-06-21
- – application/pdf
On Efficient Jurisdiction Structure in a Simple Local Public Goods Economy with Interjurisdictional Trade
description- – This note shows that if commodities are tradable across jurisdictions, then it may be efficient to have heterogeneously sized jurisdictions, even if (i) consumers are identical, (ii) there is one private good and one public good, (iii) utility and production functions are not affected by population (within the relevant range of sizes of jurisdictions).
- – WP497
- – 2001-03-29
- – application/pdf
Coalition Formation as a Dynamic Process
description- – We study coalition formation as an ongoing, dynamic process,with payoffs generated as coalitions form, disintegrate, or regroup. A process of coalition formation (PCF) is an equilibrium if a coalitional move to some other state can be"justified"by the expectation of higher future value, compared to inaction. This future value,in turn,is endogenous: it depends on coalitional movements at each node. We study existence of equilibrium PCFs. We connect deterministic equilibrium PCFs with unique absorbing state to the core, and equilibrium PCFs with multiple absorbing states to the largest consistent set.In addition, we study cyclical as well as stochastic equilibrium PCFs.
- – WP478
- – 2002-04-15
- – application/pdf
Anchor Stores
description- – Planned shopping malls usually have one or more department stores (anchor stores) and multiple specialized retail stores in each commodity category. This paper presents a model of shopping malls in which these two types of stores sell noncomplementary commodities. If anchor stores sell standard (riskless yet low-value) commodities and retail stores sell specialized (high variance yet high expected value) commodities, then each type of store may bene t from collocating with the other, even though the stores sell substitutable products. The underlying intuition is that the presence of each type of retailer enhances consumer traffic at the shopping mall, which benefits the retailer or retailers of the other type. Under some parametric restrictions, the value of this increased traffic more than offsets the loss in markups due to competition from additional sellers at the mall. In this case, it is in a land developer's interest to rent retail space in the mall to both types of retailers. A Tiebout-like argument explains the striking similarity in the composition of stores in planned shopping malls.
- – WP516
- – 2002-10-25
- – application/pdf
Uniqueness of User Equilibrium in Transportation Networks with Heterogeneous Commuters
description- – This paper discusses uniqueness and efficiency of user equilibrium in transportation networks with heterogeneous commuters. Daganzo (1983, Transportation Science) proved the uniqueness of (stochastic) user equilibrium when commuters have heterogeneous tastes over possible paths but identical disutility functions from time costs. We first show, by example, that his result may not apply in general networks if disutility functions are allowed to differ. However, for"simple"transportation networks, we can show that user equilibrium is always unique and weakly Pareto efficient (cf. the Braess example) for a general class of utility functions. We investigate if this result applies to more general networks. We also show that user equilibrium is unique in a dynamic bottleneck model with a simple network. We discuss an interesting relationship between the following two problems: the existence of user equilibrium in a finite model and the uniqueness of user equilibrium in a continuum model. In the appendix, we also provide a proof of a slightly generalized version of Daganzo's theorem.
- – WP494
- – 2002-08-01
- – application/pdf
Games of Capacity Manipulation in Hospital-Intern Markets
description- – In this paper, we analyze capacity manipulation games in hospital-intern markets inspired by the real-life entry-level labor markets for young physicians seeking residencies at hospitals. In these markets, where the matching is determined by a centralized clearinghouse called the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) in the USA, hospitals usually report the number of vacant positions to the NRMP as well as their preferences. We consider a model where preferences of hospitals and interns are common knowledge, and hospitals play a game of reporting their capacities. We characterize the equilibria of the game-form for the two most widely used stable rules: hospital-optimal and intern-optimal stable rules. We show that (i) there may not be a pure strategy equilibrium in general; and (ii) when a pure strategy equilibrium exists other than true-capacities, truthful capacity revelation is weakly Pareto-dominated for hospitals. We also analyze other properties of the set of Nash equilibria. Finally, we present sufficient conditions on preferences to guarantee the existence of pure strategy equilibria.
- – WP515
- – 2002-07-31
- – application/pdf
A Welfare Decomposition in Quasi-Linear Economies
description- – We propose a decomposition of social welfare when consumers' preferences are described by quasi-linear utility functions. In our decomposition, social welfare is expressed as the sum of consumers' gross utilities and trade surplus of non-numeraire goods, whose consumption enters utility functions non-linearly. This decomposition is useful especially when we assess the impact of trade liberalization on individual countries. We propose a decomposition of social welfare when consumers' preferences are described by quasi-linear utility functions. In our decomposition, social welfare is expressed as the sum of consumers' gross utilities and trade surplus of non-numeraire goods, whose consumption enters utility functions non-linearly. This decomposition is useful especially when we assess the impact of trade liberalization on individual countries.
- – 2003-08-01
- – application/pdf
Salience: Agenda Choices by Competing Candidates
description- – Which issues are discussed by candidates in an election campaign? Why are some issues never discussed? Model tractability is lost quickly when dealing with these questions, partly because of the multidimensional voting inherent in models of multiple issues. Our model features two candidates for office who can talk about any subset of issues, allowing uncertainty both on the part of voters and candidates, and taking candidates to be office motivated. Candidates move first and simultaneously, announcing any positions they choose on any issues. To us, salience is simply the discussion of an issue in a campaign. If both candidates and voters are expected utility maximizers, we find salience results, in that candidates typically want to talk about everything (or they are indifferent between talking and nonsalience). Leaving the expected utility framework, we present an example using"Knightian uncertainty"or"maxmin expected utility with multiple priors"of Gilboa-Schmeidler to illustrate how robust nonsalience and salience of issues might be generated.
- – WP603
- – 2004-05-01
- – application/pdf
Free Trade Networks with Transfers
description- – The paper investigates the network of bilateral free trade agreements (FTA) in the context of a network formation game with transfers. Furusawa and Konishi (2002) show that without international transfers, countries with different industrialization levels may not sign an FTA, so that the global free trade network, in which every pair of countries sign an FTA, is not pairwise stable in general. We show in this paper that even if the world consists of fairly asymmetric countries, the global free trade network is pairwise stable when transfers between FTA signatories are allowed. Moreover, it is the unique pairwise stable network unless industrial commodities are highly substitutable from one another.
- – WP606
- – 2004-10-01
- – application/pdf
Credible Group-Stability in Multi-Partner Matching Problems
description- – It is known that in two-sided many-to-many matching problems, pairwise-stable matchings may not be immune to group deviations, unlike in many-to-one matching problems (Blair 1988). In this paper, we show that pairwise stability is equivalent to credible group stability when one side has responsive preferences and the other side has categorywise-responsive preferences. A credibly group-stable matching is immune to any"executable"group deviations with an appropriate definition of executability. Under the same preference restriction, we also show the equivalence between the set of pairwise-stable matchings and the set of matchings generated by coalition-proof Nash equilibria of an appropriately defined strategic-form game.
- – WP570
- – 2004-09-01
- – application/pdf
Referrals in Search Markets
description- – This paper compares equilibrium outcomes in search markets with and without referrals. Although consumers would benefit from honest referrals, it is not at all clear whether firms would unilaterally provide information about competing offers since such information could encourage a consumer to purchase the product elsewhere. In a model of a horizontally differentiated product and sequential consumer search, we show that valuable referrals can arise as a part of equilibrium: firm will give referrals to consumers whose ideal product is sufficiently far from the firm's offering. The effect of referrals on the equilibrium prices is examined, and it is found that prices are higher in markets with referrals. Although consumers can be made worse off by the existence of referrals, referrals lead to a Pareto improvement as long as search cost is not too low relative to product heterogeneity. The effects of referral fees and third-party referrals are examined, and policy implications are drawn.
- – WP614
- – 2005-07-27
- – application/pdf
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