IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20080117.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Auctions and Forced Divestitures increase Competition?

Author

Listed:
  • Adriaan R. Soetevent

    (Amsterdam School of Economics, University of Amsterdam)

  • Marco A. Haan

    (University of Groningen)

  • Pim Heijnen

    (Amsterdam School of Economics, University of Amsterdam)

Abstract

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the 'Journal of Industrial Economics' (2014). Volume 62, issue 3, pages 467-502. To foster competition, governments can intervene by auctioning licenses to operate, or by imposing divestitures. The Dutch government has done exactly that, organizing auctions to redistribute tenancy rights for highway gasoline stations and imposing divestitures of such stations on the four major companies. We evaluate this policy experiment and find that the auctioning of licenses without an obligation to divest has no discernible effect on prices. An obligation to divest lowers prices by 1.3–2.3% at divested sites. Moreover, prices decrease by 0.9–1.2% at sites nearby. This suggests that the observed price decreases are at least partly due to competitive spillovers.

Suggested Citation

  • Adriaan R. Soetevent & Marco A. Haan & Pim Heijnen, 2008. "Do Auctions and Forced Divestitures increase Competition?," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-117/1, Tinbergen Institute, revised 02 Aug 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20080117
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/08117.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeremy Bulow & Ming Huang & Paul Klemperer, 1999. "Toeholds and Takeovers," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 427-454, June.
    2. Hausman, Jerry & Tardiff, Timothy & Belinfante, Alexander, 1993. "The Effects of the Breakup of AT&T on Telephone Penetration in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 178-184, May.
    3. Manuela Angelucci & Giacomo De Giorgi, 2009. "Indirect Effects of an Aid Program: How Do Cash Transfers Affect Ineligibles' Consumption?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 486-508, March.
    4. Justine S. Hastings, 2004. "Vertical Relationships and Competition in Retail Gasoline Markets: Empirical Evidence from Contract Changes in Southern California," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 317-328, March.
    5. A. Smith, Jeffrey & E. Todd, Petra, 2005. "Does matching overcome LaLonde's critique of nonexperimental estimators?," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 305-353.
    6. Susan Athey & Jonathan Levin & Enrique Seira, 2011. "Comparing open and Sealed Bid Auctions: Evidence from Timber Auctions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 207-257.
    7. Ellert, James C, 1976. "Mergers, Antitrust Law Enforcement and Stockholder Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(2), pages 715-732, May.
    8. Heidrun C. Hoppe & Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2006. "License Auctions and Market Structure," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 371-396, June.
    9. Klemperer, Paul, 2002. "How (not) to run auctions: The European 3G telecom auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 829-845, May.
    10. Christopher T. Taylor & Nicholas M. Kreisle & Paul R. Zimmerman, 2010. "Vertical Relationships and Competition in Retail Gasoline Markets: Empirical Evidence from Contract Changes in Southern California: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1269-1276, June.
    11. Tenn, Steven & Yun, John M., 2011. "The success of divestitures in merger enforcement: Evidence from the J&J-Pfizer transaction," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 273-282, March.
    12. Bacon, Robert W., 1991. "Rockets and feathers: the asymmetric speed of adjustment of UK retail gasoline prices to cost changes," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 211-218, July.
    13. Hosken, Daniel S. & McMillan, Robert S. & Taylor, Christopher T., 2008. "Retail gasoline pricing: What do we know?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1425-1436, November.
    14. Severin Borenstein & A. Colin Cameron & Richard Gilbert, 1997. "Do Gasoline Prices Respond Asymmetrically to Crude Oil Price Changes?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 305-339.
    15. Andrew Eckert & Douglas S. West, 2004. "A tale of two cities: Price uniformity and price volatility in gasoline retailing," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 38(1), pages 25-46, March.
    16. R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan, 1996. "Analyzing the Airwaves Auction," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 159-175, Winter.
    17. Castanias, Rick & Johnson, Herb, 1993. "Gas Wars: Retail Gasoline Fluctuations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(1), pages 171-174, February.
    18. Elzinga, Kenneth G, 1969. "The Antimerger Law: Pyrrhic Victories?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 43-78, April.
    19. Zhongmin Wang, 2009. "(Mixed) Strategy in Oligopoly Pricing: Evidence from Gasoline Price Cycles Before and Under a Timing Regulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(6), pages 987-1030, December.
    20. Alberto Abadie & Guido W. Imbens, 2006. "Large Sample Properties of Matching Estimators for Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(1), pages 235-267, January.
    21. Benjamin Atkinson, 2009. "Retail Gasoline Price Cycles: Evidence from Guelph, Ontario Using Bi-Hourly, Station-Specific Retail Price Data," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 85-110.
    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. Soetevent, Adriaan R. & Bružikas, Tadas, 2018. "The impact of process innovation on prices: Evidence from automated fuel retailing in The Netherlands," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 181-196.
    2. Lach, Saul & Moraga-González, José-Luis, 2009. "Heterogeneous Price Information and the Effect of Competition," CEPR Discussion Papers 7319, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Saul Lach & José L. Moraga†González, 2017. "Asymmetric Price Effects of Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(4), pages 767-803, December.
    4. Romahn, André & Friberg, Richard, 2012. "Ex-Post Merger Review and Divestitures," IESE Research Papers D/1056, IESE Business School.
    5. Pim Heijnen & Marco A. Haan & Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2015. "Screening for collusion: a spatial statistics approach," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 15(2), pages 417-448.
    6. Adriaan R. Soetevent & Marco A. Haan & Pim Heijnen, 2014. "Do Auctions and Forced Divestitures Increase Competition? Evidence for Retail Gasoline Markets," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 467-502, September.
    7. Bruzikas, Tadas & Soetevent, Adriaan, 2014. "Detailed data and changes in market structure," Research Report 14027-EEF, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).

    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. Adriaan R. Soetevent & Marco A. Haan & Pim Heijnen, 2014. "Do Auctions and Forced Divestitures Increase Competition? Evidence for Retail Gasoline Markets," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(3), pages 467-502, September.
    2. repec:dgr:rugsom:14027-eef is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Bruzikas, Tadas & Soetevent, Adriaan, 2014. "Detailed data and changes in market structure," Research Report 14027-EEF, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    4. Tadas Bruzikas & Adriaan R. Soetevent, 2014. "Detailed Data and Changes in Market Structure: The Move to Unmanned Gasoline Service Stations," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 14-123/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. Mariano Tappata & Jing Yan, 2017. "Competition in Retail Petrol Markets," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 201-218, September.
    6. Sara Ellison & Christopher M. Snyder, 2014. "An Empirical Study of Pricing Strategies in an Online Market with High-Frequency Price Information," CESifo Working Paper Series 4655, CESifo.
    7. Sara Ellison & Christopher M. Snyder & Hongkai Zhang, 2016. "Costs of Managerial Attention and Activity as a Source of Sticky Prices: Structural Estimates from an Online Market," CESifo Working Paper Series 6285, CESifo.
    8. Justus Haucap & Ulrich Heimeshoff & Manuel Siekmann, 2017. "Fuel Prices and Station Heterogeneity on Retail Gasoline Markets," The Energy Journal, , vol. 38(6), pages 81-104, November.
    9. David P Byrne & Jia Sheen Nah & Peng Xue, 2018. "Australia Has the World's Best Petrol Price Data: FuelWatch and FuelCheck," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 51(4), pages 564-577, December.
    10. Fullerton, Thomas M. & Jiménez, Alan A. & Walke, Adam G., 2015. "An econometric analysis of retail gasoline prices in a border metropolitan economy," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 450-461.
    11. Perdiguero, Jordi & Jiménez, Juan Luis, 2021. "Price coordination in the Spanish oil market: The monday effect," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    12. Noel, Michael D., 2015. "Do Edgeworth price cycles lead to higher or lower prices?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 81-93.
    13. Apergis, Nicholas & Payne, James E., 2017. "Volatility Modeling of U.S. Metropolitan Retail Gasoline Prices: An Empirical Note," Journal of Regional Analysis and Policy, Mid-Continent Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), September.
    14. Paul Klemperer, 2002. "What Really Matters in Auction Design," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 169-189, Winter.
    15. David P. Byrne, Gordon W. Leslie, and Roger Ware, 2015. "How do Consumers Respond to Gasoline Price Cycles?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    16. Victor Aguirregabiria & Margaret Slade, 2017. "Empirical models of firms and industries," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(5), pages 1445-1488, December.
    17. Haucap, Justus & Heimeshoff, Ulrich & Siekmann, Manuel, 2016. "Selling gasoline as a by-product: The impact of market structure on local prices," DICE Discussion Papers 240, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    18. Remer, Marc, 2015. "An empirical investigation of the determinants of asymmetric pricing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 46-56.
    19. Oystein Foros & Frode Steen, 2008. "Gasoline Prices Jump Up on Mondays: an Outcome of Aggressive Competition?," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2008-20, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    20. Hurtado, Carlos & González, Julia, 2024. "Price differences within retail gasoline markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    21. Matthew S. Lewis, 2011. "Asymmetric Price Adjustment and Consumer Search: An Examination of the Retail Gasoline Market," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(2), pages 409-449, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Divestitures; Auctions; Entry; Policy Evaluation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

    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:tin:wpaper:20080117. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.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.