IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jogath/v49y2020i4d10.1007_s00182-020-00717-1.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Limits of price competition: cost asymmetry and imperfect information

Author

Listed:
  • Sneha Bakshi

    (Independent Researcher)

Abstract

In a class of asymmetric-cost duopoly price competition games, price-elastic individual demand reveals a threshold of informed buyers below which equilibrium is in monopoly prices. Even if the threshold is met, unless all buyers are informed, monopoly prices are listed and are more likely between less alike sellers. An increase in the efficient seller’s cost weakly reduces its rival’s price (in a first order stochastic dominated sense) without disturbing its profit. Lastly, increasing the number of sellers increases competitive pricing incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Sneha Bakshi, 2020. "Limits of price competition: cost asymmetry and imperfect information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(4), pages 913-932, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jogath:v:49:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s00182-020-00717-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s00182-020-00717-1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00182-020-00717-1
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00182-020-00717-1?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    2. Dan Kovenock & Raymond J. Deneckere, 1996. "Bertrand-Edgeworth duopoly with unit cost asymmetry (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(1), pages 1-25.
    3. Shelegia, Sandro, 2012. "Asymmetric marginal costs in search models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 551-553.
    4. Png, I P L & Hirshleifer, D, 1987. "Price Discrimination through Offers to Match Price," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 60(3), pages 365-383, July.
    5. Douglas Gale, 1988. "Price Setting and Competition in a Simple Duopoly Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(4), pages 729-739.
    6. Nermuth, Manfred & Pasini, Giacomo & Pin, Paolo & Weidenholzer, Simon, 2013. "The informational divide," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 21-30.
    7. Narasimhan, Chakravarthi, 1988. "Competitive Promotional Strategies," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(4), pages 427-449, October.
    8. Dana, James D, Jr, 1994. "Learning in an Equilibrium Search Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(3), pages 745-771, August.
    9. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2017. "Consumer confusion, obfuscation and price regulation," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(2), pages 169-190, May.
    10. Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1979. "A Simple Model of Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(4), pages 851-858, August.
    11. Osborne, Martin J. & Pitchik, Carolyn, 1986. "Price competition in a capacity-constrained duopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 238-260, April.
    12. Roland Bénabou & Robert Gertner, 1993. "Search with Learning from Prices: Does Increased Inflationary Uncertainty Lead to Higher Markups?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(1), pages 69-93.
    13. Carlson, John A & McAfee, R Preston, 1983. "Discrete Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 91(3), pages 480-493, June.
    14. Beth Allen & Martin Hellwig, 1986. "Bertrand-Edgeworth Oligopoly in Large Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(2), pages 175-204.
    15. Louis L. Wilde & Alan Schwartz, 1979. "Equilibrium Comparison Shopping," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(3), pages 543-553.
    16. Babur De Los Santos & Ali Hortacsu & Matthijs R. Wildenbeest, 2012. "Testing Models of Consumer Search Using Data on Web Browsing and Purchasing Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2955-2980, October.
    17. Blume, Andreas, 2003. "Bertrand without fudge," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 167-168, February.
    18. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    19. repec:bla:scandj:v:79:y:1977:i:1:p:20-40 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Helmut Bester, 1988. "Bargaining, Search Costs and Equilibrium Price Distributions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(2), pages 201-214.
    21. Sridhar Moorthy & Ralph A. Winter, 2006. "Price‐matching guarantees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 449-465, June.
    22. Burdett, Kenneth & Judd, Kenneth L, 1983. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(4), pages 955-969, July.
    23. Spulber, Daniel F, 1995. "Bertrand Competition When Rivals' Costs Are Unknown," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 1-11, March.
    24. Sridhar Moorthy & Ralph A.Winter, 2006. "Price-Matching Guarantees," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(2), pages 449-465, Summer.
    25. Diamond, Peter A., 1971. "A model of price adjustment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 156-168, June.
    26. Rosenthal, Robert W, 1980. "A Model in Which an Increase in the Number of Sellers Leads to a Higher Price," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(6), pages 1575-1579, September.
    27. Shilony, Yuval, 1977. "Mixed pricing in oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 373-388, April.
    28. Arthur Fishman, 1994. "Asymmetric Price Competition with Price Inertia," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 25(4), pages 608-618, Winter.
    29. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Backus, Matthew R. & Podwol, Joseph Uri & Schneider, Henry S., 2014. "Search costs and equilibrium price dispersion in auction markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 173-192.
    2. Xulia González & Daniel Miles-Touya, 2018. "Price dispersion, chain heterogeneity, and search in online grocery markets," SERIEs: Journal of the Spanish Economic Association, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 115-139, March.
    3. Avi Weiss & Joshua Sherman, 2014. "An Empirical Analysis of Search Costs and Price Dispersion," Working Papers 2014-06, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    4. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2004. "Price Dispersion In The Small And In The Large: Evidence From An Internet Price Comparison Site," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 463-496, December.
    5. Joshua Sherman & Avi Weiss, 2017. "On Fruitful And Futile Tests Of The Relationship Between Search And Price Dispersion," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1898-1918, October.
    6. Jun Honda, 2015. "Intermediary Search for Suppliers in Procurement Auctions," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp203, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    7. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2004. "Temporal Price Dispersion: Evidence from an Online Consumer Electronics Market," Working Papers 2004-04, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    8. Ed Hopkins, "undated". "Price Dispersion: An Evolutionary Approach," Department of Economics 1996 : III, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    9. Johannes Johnen & David Ronayne, 2021. "The only Dance in Town: Unique Equilibrium in a Generalized Model of Price Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 69(3), pages 595-614, September.
    10. Sinitsyn, Maxim, 2008. "Characterization of the support of the mixed strategy price equilibria in oligopolies with heterogeneous consumers," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 242-245, May.
    11. Obradovits, Martin, 2017. "Search and segregation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 137-165.
    12. Sinitsyn, Maxim, 2009. "Price dispersion in duopolies with heterogeneous consumers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 197-205, March.
    13. Álvarez, Francisco & Rey, José-Manuel, 2019. "(Quasi) uniqueness and restoring dynamics of price-dispersion market equilibria under search cost," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 1-13.
    14. Stahl, Dale O., 1996. "Oligopolistic pricing with heterogeneous consumer search," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 243-268.
    15. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2006. "Persistent Price Dispersion in Online Markets," Chapters, in: Dennis W. Jansen (ed.), The New Economy and Beyond, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan, 2001. "Information Gatekeepers on the Internet and the Competitiveness of Homogeneous Product Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 454-474, June.
    17. Atayev, Atabek, 2022. "Uncertain product availability in search markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    18. Obradovits, Martin, 2015. "Going to the Discounter: Consumer Search with Local Market Heterogeneities," MPRA Paper 66613, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Hämäläinen, Saara, 2018. "Competitive search obfuscation," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 38-63.
    20. Jason R. Blevins & Garrett T. Senney, 2019. "Dynamic selection and distributional bounds on search costs in dynamic unit‐demand models," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(3), pages 891-929, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Uninformed buyers; Monopoly prices; Asymmetric costs; Price competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    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:spr:jogath:v:49:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s00182-020-00717-1. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.