IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rim/rimwps/06_12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Profits and Competition in a Unionized Duopoly Model with Product Differentiation and Labour Decreasing Returns

Author

Listed:
  • Luciano Fanti

    (Department of Economics, University of Pisa, Italy)

  • Nicola Meccheri

    (Department of Economics, University of Pisa, Italy)

Abstract

In this paper, we aim at investigating if the conventional wisdom, that an increase of competition linked to a decrease in the degree of product differentiation always reduces firms' profits, remains true in a unionized duopoly model with labour decreasing returns. In this context, mixed results emerge. In particular, we show that a decrease in the degree of product differentiation may affect wages, hence profits, differently, depending on both the mode of competition in the product market (Cournot or Bertrand competition) and the particular unionization structure (firm-specific or industry-wide union(s)). Interestingly, it is shown that the conventional wisdom can actually be reversed, even if under Bertrand competition only.

Suggested Citation

  • Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2012. "Profits and Competition in a Unionized Duopoly Model with Product Differentiation and Labour Decreasing Returns," Working Paper series 06_12, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:rim:rimwps:06_12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rcea.org/RePEc/pdf/wp06_12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nickell, Stephen & Layard, Richard, 1999. "Labor market institutions and economic performance," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 46, pages 3029-3084, Elsevier.
    2. Naylor, Robin, 1999. "Union Wage Strategies and International Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(452), pages 102-125, January.
    3. Mukherjee, Arijit & Pennings, Enrico, 2011. "Unionization structure, licensing and innovation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 232-241, March.
    4. Piercarlo Zanchettin, 2006. "Differentiated Duopoly with Asymmetric Costs," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(4), pages 999-1015, December.
    5. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2011. "The Cournot-Bertrand profit differential in a differentiated duopoly with unions and labour decreasing returns," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(1), pages 233-244.
    6. Henrick Horn & Asher Wolinsky, 1988. "Bilateral Monopolies and Incentives for Merger," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(3), pages 408-419, Autumn.
    7. Naylor, Robin, 1998. "International trade and economic integration when labour markets are generally unionised," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(7), pages 1251-1267, July.
    8. Petrakis, Emmanuel & Vlassis, Minas, 2000. "Endogenous scope of bargaining in a union-oligopoly model: when will firms and unions bargain over employment?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 261-281, May.
    9. Perry, Martin K & Porter, Robert H, 1985. "Oligopoly and the Incentive for Horizontal Merger," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(1), pages 219-227, March.
    10. John S. Heywood & Matthew Mcginty, 2007. "Convex Costs And The Merger Paradox Revisited," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(2), pages 342-349, April.
    11. Iversen, Torben, 1998. "Wage Bargaining, Central Bank Independence, and the Real Effects of Money," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(3), pages 469-504, July.
    12. Kurt R. Brekke, 2004. "Competition or Coordination in Hospital Markets with Unionised Labour," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 65-89, March.
    13. Symeonidis, George, 2010. "Downstream merger and welfare in a bilateral oligopoly," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 230-243, May.
    14. Arijit Mukherjee & Laixun Zhao, 2007. "Unionization Structure and the Incentives for Foreign Direct Investment," Discussion Paper Series 202, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    15. Nirvikar Singh & Xavier Vives, 1984. "Price and Quantity Competition in a Differentiated Duopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 546-554, Winter.
    16. White, Mark D., 1996. "Mixed oligopoly, privatization and subsidization," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 189-195, November.
    17. Dowrick, Steve & Spencer, Barbara J, 1994. "Union Attitudes to Labor-Saving Innovation: When Are Unions Luddites?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(2), pages 316-344, April.
    18. de Fraja, Giovanni & Delbono, Flavio, 1990. "Game Theoretic Models of Mixed Oligopoly," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(1), pages 1-17.
    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. Fanti, Luciano & Meccheri, Nicola, 2014. "Profits and competition under alternative technologies in a unionized duopoly with product differentiation," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 157-168.

    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. Fanti, Luciano & Meccheri, Nicola, 2014. "Profits and competition under alternative technologies in a unionized duopoly with product differentiation," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 157-168.
    2. Fanti, Luciano, 2013. "Cross-ownership and unions in a Cournot duopoly: When profits reduce with horizontal product differentiation," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 34-40.
    3. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2012. "Differentiated duopoly and horizontal merger profitability under monopoly central union and convex costs," Discussion Papers 2012/134, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    4. Nicola Meccheri & Luciano Fanti, 2012. "Managerial Delegation Schemes in a Duopoly with Endogenous Production Costs: A Comparison of Sales and Relative Profit Delegation under Centralised Unionisation," Working Paper series 44_12, Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis.
    5. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2013. "Managerial Delegation under Alternative Unionization Structures," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 27(1), pages 38-57, March.
    6. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2016. "Non-Rigid Wages And Merger Profitability Reversal Under Convex Costs And Centralized Unionization," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(4), pages 383-395, October.
    7. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2014. "Capacity choice and welfare under alternative unionisation structures," Discussion Papers 2014/176, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    8. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2017. "Unionization Regimes, Capacity Choice by Firms and Welfare Outcomes," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(6), pages 661-681, December.
    9. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2012. "Merger results under price competition and plant-specific unions," Discussion Papers 2012/135, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    10. Manasakis, Constantine & Vlassis, Minas, 2014. "Downstream mode of competition with upstream market power," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 84-93.
    11. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2015. "On the Cournot–Bertrand Profit Differential and the Structure of Unionisation in a Managerial Duopoly," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 266-287, December.
    12. Kangsik, Choi, 2008. "Cournot-Bertrand competition in a unionized mixed duopoly," MPRA Paper 12787, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Dec 2008.
    13. Luciano Fanti, 2014. "Welfare effects of cross-ownership in a unionised duopoly," ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(2), pages 21-41.
    14. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2012. "Price competition, merger and welfare under firm-specific unions: on the role of unions' preference towards wages," Discussion Papers 2012/136, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    15. Luciano Fanti, 2016. "Interlocking cross-ownership in a unionised duopoly: when social welfare benefits from “more collusion”," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 119(1), pages 47-63, September.
    16. Luciano Fanti & Nicola Meccheri, 2012. "Labour decreasing returns, industry-wide union and Cournot-Bertrand profit ranking. A note," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(1), pages 894-904.
    17. Choi, Kangsik, 2008. "Comparing Cournot and Bertrand Competition in a Unionized Mixed Duopoly," MPRA Paper 15468, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 27 May 2009.
    18. Renu Bansal & Dibyendu Maiti, 2024. "Capital Inflow, Strategic Subcontracting, and Formal Employment," Working papers 348, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    19. Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2011. "Stability in a Cournot duopoly under asymmetric unionism," Discussion Papers 2011/123, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    20. Domenico Buccella & Luciano Fanti & Luca Gori, 2023. "Managerial firms’ profitability, unions, and environmental taxes," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 94(2), pages 575-598, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    unionized duopoly; labour decreasing returns; product differentiation; profits;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J43 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Agricultural Labor Markets
    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    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:rim:rimwps:06_12. 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: Marco Savioli (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rcfeait.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.