IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/rje/randje/v15y1984ispringp69-84.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Market Contestability in the Presence of Sunk (Entry) Costs

Author

Listed:
  • Don Coursey
  • R. Mark Isaac
  • Margaret Luke
  • Vernon L. Smith

Abstract

This article extends previous laboratory experimental research to examine the competitive discipline of contested markets with a "natural monopoly"-type cost structure where sunk costs are neither zero nor infinite. Several alternative conjectures as to how or whether sunk costs can weaken the discipline of contested markets are presented and interpreted in the context of the experimental design. Sunk costs are found to weaken the support for "strong" interpretations of the contestable markets hypothesis and thus yield a wide diversity of dynamic patterns of market performance. Yet the disciplining power of contestability remains impressive, with no indications of sustained monopoly pricing.

Suggested Citation

  • Don Coursey & R. Mark Isaac & Margaret Luke & Vernon L. Smith, 1984. "Market Contestability in the Presence of Sunk (Entry) Costs," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(1), pages 69-84, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:15:y:1984:i:spring:p:69-84
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0741-6261%28198421%2915%3A1%3C69%3AMCITPO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3&origin=repec
    File Function: full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to JSTOR subscribers. See http://www.jstor.org for details.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David J. Teece, 1986. "Assessing The Competition Faced By Oil Pipelines," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 4(4), pages 65-78, October.
    2. Jim Engle-Warnick & Bradley Ruffle, 2002. "Buyer Countervailing Power versus Monopoly Power: Evidence from Experimental Posted-Offer Markets," Economics Papers 2002-W14, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    3. Durham, Yvonne & McCabe, Kevin & Olson, Mark A. & Rassenti, Stephen & Smith, Vernon, 2004. "Oligopoly competition in fixed cost environments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 147-162, February.
    4. Utteeyo Dasgupta, 2009. "Potential competition in the presence of sunk entry costs: an experiment," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 203-225.
    5. Buchheit, Steve & Feltovich, Nick, 2010. "Experimental evidence of a sunk–cost paradox: a study of pricing behavior in Bertrand–Edgeworth duopoly," SIRE Discussion Papers 2010-124, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    6. March, Christoph, 2019. "The behavioral economics of artificial intelligence: Lessons from experiments with computer players," BERG Working Paper Series 154, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    7. Duffy, John, 2006. "Agent-Based Models and Human Subject Experiments," Handbook of Computational Economics, in: Leigh Tesfatsion & Kenneth L. Judd (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 19, pages 949-1011, Elsevier.
    8. Kritikos, Alexander & Bolle, Friedel, 2004. "Punishment as a public good. When should monopolists care about a consumer boycott?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 355-372, June.
    9. March, Christoph, 2021. "Strategic interactions between humans and artificial intelligence: Lessons from experiments with computer players," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    10. D.J. Butler, 1990. "Experimental Techniques in Economics: Some lessons to date," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 90-22, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    11. Kelly, Frank S., 1995. "Laboratory subjects as multiproduct monopoly firms: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 401-420, August.
    12. Satoshi Kanazawa, 1999. "Using Laboratory Experiments To Test Theories Of Corporate Behavior," Rationality and Society, , vol. 11(4), pages 443-461, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rje:randje:v:15:y:1984:i:spring:p:69-84. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.rje.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.