IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fednsr/75.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sunk costs, contestability, and the latent contract market

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Stefanadis

Abstract

The idea that an industry with sunk costs may be contestable even in the absence of long-term contracts has received little attention from formal economic theory yet is popular among monopolists facing antitrust suits. The paper formally illustrates the argument. In an infinitely repeated game, there exists a class of contestable outcomes in which the monopolist sells only on the spot market and charges low prices along the equilibrium path to prevent customers from resorting to long-term contracts. Then, the crucial test for contestability is the level of transaction costs in the latent contract market.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Stefanadis, 1999. "Sunk costs, contestability, and the latent contract market," Staff Reports 75, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:75
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr75.html
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff_reports/sr75.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Weitzman, Martin L, 1983. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 486-487, June.
    2. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1982. "Limit Pricing and Entry under Incomplete Information: An Equilibrium Analysis," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(2), pages 443-459, March.
    3. Richard J. Sexton & Terri A. Sexton, 1987. "Cooperatives as Entrants," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(4), pages 581-595, Winter.
    4. Elie Appelbaum & Chin Lim, 1985. "Contestable Markets under Uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(1), pages 28-40, Spring.
    5. Baumol, William J, 1982. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 1-15, March.
    6. Williamson, Oliver E, 1979. "Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 233-261, October.
    7. Baumol, William J & Panzar, John C & Willig, Robert D, 1983. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 491-496, June.
    8. Drew Fudenberg & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem In Repeated Games With Discounting Or With Incomplete Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 11, pages 209-230, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "Nash Equilibrium and the Industrial Organization of Markets with Large Fixed Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(5), pages 1149-1172, September.
    10. Katz, Michael L, 1987. "The Welfare Effects of Third-Degree Price Discrimination in," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(1), pages 154-167, March.
    11. Maskin, Eric & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "A Theory of Dynamic Oligopoly, I: Overview and Quantity Competition with Large Fixed Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(3), pages 549-569, May.
    12. Jean Tirole, 1988. "The Theory of Industrial Organization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262200716, December.
    13. Rasmusen, Eric B & Ramseyer, J Mark & Wiley, John S, Jr, 1991. "Naked Exclusion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(5), pages 1137-1145, December.
    14. Schwartz, Marius & Reynolds, Robert J, 1983. "Contestable Markets: An Uprising in the Theory of Industry Structure: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 488-490, June.
    15. Innes, Robert & Sexton, Richard J., 1993. "Customer coalitions, monopoly price discrimination and generic entry deterrence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 1569-1597, December.
    16. Rasmusen, E. & Fernandez, L., 1993. "Perfectly Contestable Monopoly and Adverse Selection," Papers 93-016, Indiana - Center for Econometric Model Research.
    17. Klein, Benjamin & Crawford, Robert G & Alchian, Armen A, 1978. "Vertical Integration, Appropriable Rents, and the Competitive Contracting Process," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 21(2), pages 297-326, October.
    18. Stefanadis, Christodoulos, 1998. "Selective Contracts, Foreclosure, and the Chicago School View," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(2), pages 429-450, October.
    19. Innes, Robert & Sexton, Richard J, 1994. "Strategic Buyers and Exclusionary Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 566-584, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Packalen, Mikko, 2010. "Complements and potential competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 244-253, May.
    2. Hongqi Ma & Guangjun Shen & Jingxian Zou, 2024. "Does excess capacity strengthen firms' dependence on the polluting path? Evidence from Chinese iron and steel firms," Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 32(3), pages 971-1000, July.
    3. T.W. Ross, 2004. "Sunk Costs and the Entry Decision," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 79-93, June.

    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. Brennan, Timothy J., 2000. "The Economics of Competition Policy: Recent Developments and Cautionary Notes in Antitrust and Regulation," Discussion Papers 10716, Resources for the Future.
    2. Gans, Joshua S. & King, Stephen P., 2002. "Exclusionary contracts and competition for large buyers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(9), pages 1363-1381, November.
    3. 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.
    4. Dasgupta Utteeyo, 2011. "Are Entry Threats Always Credible?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-41, December.
    5. Gunnar Eliasson & Magnus Henrekson, 2004. "William J. Baumol: An Entrepreneurial Economist on the Economics of Entrepreneurship," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 1-7, August.
    6. Amavilah, Voxi Heinrich, 2012. "Baumol, Panzar, and Willig’s Theory of Contestable Markets and Industry Structure: A Summary of Reactions," MPRA Paper 41974, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Vahabi,Mehrdad, 2019. "The Political Economy of Predation," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107591370, January.
    8. Jean J. Gabszewicz & Jacques-François Thisse, 2000. "Microeconomic theories of imperfect competition," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 37(1), pages 47-99.
    9. Drew Fudenberg, 2015. "Tirole's Industrial Regulation and Organization Legacy in Economics," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(3), pages 771-800, July.
    10. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2014. "Market power and regulation (scientific background)," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2014-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    11. Jeon, Doh-Shin & Menicucci, Domenico, 2019. "On the unprofitability of buyer groups when sellers compete," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 265-288.
    12. Sexton, Richard J., 1993. "Noncooperative Game Theory: A Review with Potential Applications to Agricultural Markets," Research Reports 25183, University of Connecticut, Food Marketing Policy Center.
    13. Cheung, Cherry & Coucke, Kristien & Neicu, Daniel, 2011. "A Decision Tree as a Quick Scan for Effective Market Functioning," Working Papers 2011/06, Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel, Faculteit Economie en Management.
    14. Sexton, Richard J., 1990. "The Role of Cooperatives in Increasingly Concentrated Agricultural Markets," Cooperatives: Their Importance in the Future Food and Agricultural System - FAMC 1990 Conference 265909, Food and Agricultural Marketing Consortium (FAMC).
    15. Arrunada, Benito & Paz-Ares, Candido, 1997. "Mandatory rotation of company auditors: A critical examination," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 31-61, March.
    16. Jerker Denrell, 2000. "Radical Organization Theory," Rationality and Society, , vol. 12(1), pages 39-66, February.
    17. Zhang, Mingxia & Sexton, Richard J., 2000. "Captive Supplies And The Cash Market Price: A Spatial Markets Approach," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 25(1), pages 1-21, July.
    18. Chen, Yongmin & Rosenthal, Robert W., 1996. "Dynamic duopoly with slowly changing customer loyalties," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 269-296, May.
    19. Inderst, Roman & Wey, Christian, 2007. "Buyer power and supplier incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 647-667, April.
    20. Marie-Laure Allain & Marcel Boyer & Jean-Pierre Ponssard & Rachidi Kotchoni, 2011. "The Determination of Optimal Fines in Cartel Cases - The Myth of Underdeterrence," CIRANO Working Papers 2011s-34, CIRANO.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Monopolies; Contracts; Antitrust law;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fednsr:75. 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: Gabriella Bucciarelli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbnyus.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.