IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/oplwec/qt43b7w47c.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Welfare Losses from Price-Matching Policies

Author

Listed:
  • Edlin, Aaron S.
  • Emch, Eric R.

Abstract

Several recent papers argue that price-matching policies raise equilibrium prices. We add to this literature by considering potential welfare losses, which have two sources: Harberger triangles from high prices and Posner rectangles from over-entry. We compare price-matching markets with entry to monopoly and price-matching markets without entry, and find that price matching with entry creates greater welfare losses than monopoly in markets with a low ratio of fixed to marginal cost. We illustrate this result using parameters from the US wholesale gasoline and air travel markets and relate our model to price matching among NASDAQ market makers.

Suggested Citation

  • Edlin, Aaron S. & Emch, Eric R., 1999. "The Welfare Losses from Price-Matching Policies," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt43b7w47c, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:oplwec:qt43b7w47c
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/43b7w47c.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Arbatskaya, Maria & Hviid, Morten & Shaffer, Greg, 2004. "On the Incidence and Variety of Low-Price Guarantees," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(1), pages 307-332, April.
    2. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    3. Subhasish Dugar & Todd Sorensen, 2006. "Hassle Costs, Price-Matching Guarantees and Price Competition: An Experiment," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 28(4), pages 359-378, June.
    4. Dewenter Ralf & Schwalbe Ulrich, 2016. "Preisgarantien im Kraftstoffmarkt," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 17(3), pages 276-288, September.
    5. Andreas Pollak, 2017. "Do Price-Matching Guarantees with Markups Facilitate Tacit Collusion? Theory and Experiment," Working Paper Series in Economics 93, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    6. Enrique Fatas & Juan Mañez, 2007. "Are low-price promises collusion guarantees? An experimental test of price matching policies," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 9(1), pages 59-77, March.
    7. Yuan, Hong & Krishna, Aradhna, 2011. "Price-Matching Guarantees with Endogenous Search: A Market Experiment Approach," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(2), pages 182-193.
    8. F. Javier Casado-Izaga, 2000. "Welfare effects of price-matching policies in a differentiated product market," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(2), pages 487-498, May.
    9. Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 2010. "Matching Own Prices, Rivals' Prices Or Both?," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 479-506, September.
    10. Raskovich, Alexander, 2007. "Retail buyer power through steering," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 96(2), pages 221-225, August.
    11. Mago, Shakun Datta & Pate, Jennifer G., 2009. "An experimental examination of competitor-based price matching guarantees," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 342-360, May.
    12. Pio Baake & Ulrich Schwalbe, 2013. "Price Guarantees, Consumer Search, and Hassle Costs," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1335, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    13. Arbatskaya, Maria & Hviid, Morten & Shaffer, Greg, 2006. "On the use of low-price guarantees to discourage price cutting," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1139-1156, November.
    14. Dong, Gang & Huang, Rongbing, 2022. "Inter-port price competition in a multi-port gateway region," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    15. Dong, Gang & Huang, Rongbing & Ng, Peggy, 2016. "Tacit collusion between two terminals of a port," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 199-211.
    16. Kim, Byung-Cheol & Ahmed, Mishal, 2020. "Price-match guarantees and investment incentives," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    17. Morten Hviid & Greg Shaffer, 2012. "Optimal low-price guarantees with anchoring," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 393-417, December.
    18. Arbatskaya, Maria, 2001. "Can low-price guarantees deter entry?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(9), pages 1387-1406, 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:cdl:oplwec:qt43b7w47c. 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: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lebrkus.html .

    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.