energy disruptions interfirm price effects and the aggregate economy in an economy with many imperfect competitors monopolistic competition firms that pass through higher oil prices during a disruption will affect the demand for firms in other industries firms that charge higher prices for their final product will include the effect on their own final product in their private decisions but will exclude the effect on the final products of other firms although a pecuniary externality these actions will reduce society s welfare unlike the case of a perfectly competitive market this situation creates a societal risk that is much wider than an externality in any single market policy interest shifts from one of punishing persian gulf oil producers to one of cushioning an industrialized economy from sudden disruptions caused by political and military conflicts although the value of reducing oil use depends upon a number of unknown parameters with wide distributions a representative numerical example suggests that it may approach 5 per barrel

long term bilateral monopoly the case of an exhaustible resource we construct a model of long term bilateral competition between the supplier of an exhaustible resource and a consuming country capable of producing a perfect substitute for the resource the technology for producing the substitute is known and the strategy of the consuming country is to choose an investment program for installing the substitute we derive equilibrium configurations of investment and extraction for the case of linear demand under three scenarios 1 the resource supplier is a von stackelberg leader 2 the consuming country is a von stackelberg leader and 3 buyers and sellers of the resource engage each other period by period a comparison of these cases reveals incentives for long term commitment on the part of one or both parties and also suggests that there may be gains from strategic intervention into resource markets by governments of consuming nations

second best carbon taxation in the global economy the green paradox and carbon leakage revisited acceleration of global warming resulting from a future carbon tax is large if the price elasticities of oil demand are large and that of oil supply is small the fall in the world interest rate weakens this weak green paradox effect especially if intertemporal substitution is weak still social damages from greenhouse gases drop if the fall in oil supply and cumulative emissions is strong enough if the current carbon tax is set too low the second best future carbon tax is set below the first best too to mitigate adverse green paradox effects unilateral second best optimal carbon taxes exceed the first best taxes due to an import tariff component the intertemporal terms of trade effects of the future carbon tax increase current and future tariffs and those of the current tax lower the current tariff finally carbon leakage and globally altruistic and unilateral second best optimal carbon taxes if non kyoto oil importers price carbon too low are analysed in a three country model of the global economy

discrete equilibrium price dispersion an explicit solution of an equilibrium model with price setting firms and searching customers makes possible a number of comparativestatics predictions about how cost differences among firms search costs of customers and taxes will affect the mean and variance of the distribution of market prices another implication of the model is that a firm s demand depends on the difference between its price and the average price in the market

reducing u s vulnerability to oil supply shocks the 1990 crisis in the middle east has raised concern about the united states s vulnerability to oil supply disruptions in addition a number of trends point to increased us dependence on imported oil oil imports have increased and production has declined in the united states for the last eight years imports now comprise 42 percent of total oil consumption and us dependence on oil imports is projected to increase over the next 20 years the energy modeling forum forecasts imports to be more than twice domestic production by the year 2010 there are many studies examining the effects of various policies to protect us energy security not many consider the strategic petroleum reserve spr which can be a powerful tool in combating energy supply shocks the spr can dramatically increase the domestic short run supply elasticity which has been found to be a key element in the welfare cost of protectionist policies upon examining 5 policies the author finds that the spr together with a protectionist policy works best against a supply disruption 27 refs 3 tabs

wage and price controls in the equilibrium sequential search model abstract in this paper we study the effects of wage and price controls on employment output and welfare in a simplified version of the benabou j econom theory 60 1993 140 equilibrium sequential search model with bilateral heterogeneity we show that a price ceiling increases output but the change in welfare depends on three effects the reduction in aggregate search costs the increase in surplus due to increased output and the transfer of production to the least efficient firm the model is formally identical to a standard equilibrium search model of the labor market so analogous results hold for the minimum wage

learning in an equilibrium search model this paper explores the role of learning in an equilibrium search model with asymmetric information firms with identical but privately observed marginal cost sell a homogeneous good to heterogeneously informed consumers a reservation price equilibrium exists if the uninformed consumers search cost is sufficiently large in this equilibrium the amount of price dispersion is inversely related to the realization of marginal cost also the average price level is less responsive to cost changes than when cost is observable finally uncertainty about firms marginal cost increases the expected price level copyright 1994 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

second best taxation for a polluting monopoly with abatement investment abstract this paper characterizes the optimal tax rule to regulate a polluting monopoly when the firm has the possibility of investing in an abatement technology and the environmental damages are caused by a stock pollutant the optimal policy is given by the stagewise feedback stackelberg equilibrium of a dynamic policy game between a regulator and a monopolist the regulator playing as the leader chooses an emission tax to maximize net social welfare and the monopolist acting as the follower selects the output and the investment in abatement technology to maximize profits we find that the optimal tax has two components the first component is negative and equal to the gap between the marginal revenue and the price caused by the firm market power the second component is given by the difference between the social and private shadow prices of the pollution stock considering a linear quadratic model we show that if marginal environmental damages are constant the difference between social and private shadow prices is positive and the optimal policy consists of taxing emissions at a constant rate if the marginal damages are large enough however if the marginal environmental damages are increasing the numerical exercises carried out show that this difference is negative at the steady state and the optimal policy gives the firm a subsidy when approaching the steady state regardless of the importance of the environmental damages this result is explained by the negative effect that abatement technology accumulation has on the tax finally it can be pointed out that although both models yield different predictions about the sign of the optimal policy the dynamics is globally stable for both cases

dynamic climate policy with both strategic and non strategic agents taxes versus quantities we study a dynamic game where blocs of fossil fuel importers and exporters exercise market power using taxes or quotas a non strategic fringe of emerging and developing countries consume and produce fossil fuels cumulated emissions from fossil fuel consumption create climate damages we examine markov perfect equilibria under the four combinations of trade policies and compare these to the corresponding static games taxes dominate quotas for both the strategic importer and exporter the fringe is better off under taxes than quotas because taxes result in lower fuel prices and less consumption by the strategic importer lowering climate damages

an economic evaluation of peru s liquefied natural gas export policy abstract peru s camisea gas fields hold nearly 90 of the country s natural gas reserves in the 1990s the government had a policy to prioritize camisea gas for domestic consumption the revocation of this policy in the 2000s allowed private developers to export 40 of camisea s proven reserves equivalent to one third of peru s total this usd 3 9 billion liquefied natural gas lng export project boasts the largest single foreign direct investment in peru s history a major component of the financing was granted by international financial institutions on economic grounds while the project was expected to yield a substantial return to private investors the export of one third of peru s total proven natural gas reserves is not in line with its long term interests we undertake cost benefit analyses for a series of scenarios starting with the project s formative stage in the mid 2000s and then in 2012 two years after it began its commercial operation in all cases peru does not have sufficient reserves to warrant export and the economic costs far exceed the benefits this policy of lng exports should not have been approved by the government nor should the loans have been granted by international financial institutions to make it possible

dynamically consistent oil import tariffs the standard solution of the open loop optimal import tariff is normally time inconsistent the paper shows why and derives the dynamically consistent markov perfect tariff the two tariffs are compared they differ except for a special class of import demands the time paths of tariffs and the welfare cost of an inability to commit are calculated for a dominant importer the welfare costs of the inability to commit are small if its market share

exhaustible resources and the dynamics of comparative advantage abstract this paper analyses the role of international differences in factor endowments and rates of time preference in determining the pattern of trade and specialization when one of the factors of production is an exhaustible resource the length of the period over which a country exports the resource is found to be directly related to the fraction of the world s resource stock under its control while the relative endowments of the inexhaustible factor influence only the volume of trade the direction of trade is determined by the rates of time preference with the more impatient country being the first to export the resource effects of trade on factor rewards are also examined

advertising and economic welfare is advertising socially excessive economists have been reluctant to consider this question for there appeared to be no rigorous method of analyzing cases in which advertising influences tastes some recent studies have made fundamental contributions to this debate avinash dixit and victor norman 1978 yehuda kotowitz and frank mathewson 1979 but no consensus has emerged dixit and norman were the first to establish a rigorous methodology they evaluated social welfare sw consumer s surplus profits under preand post advertising market equilibria using pre advertising tastes for one ranking and post advertising tastes for another ranking when the sw rankings were identical dixit and normal claimed that unambiguous inferences could be drawn in general they concluded that the profitmaximizing level of advertising will be excessive under a variety of product market structures franklin fisher and john mcgowan 1979 criticized dixit and norman for including advertising in the utility function but ignoring the direct effect that advertising has on utility in their welfare analysis dixit and norman 1979 courvlered that advertising merely shifts the preference ordering over goods and that it is this preference yardstick that matters welfare conclusions about advertising can be generated less controversially within the framework suggested by george stigler and gary becker 1977 they treat utility as if it were generated by commodities which individuals produce with purchased goods time human capital and firms advertising their commodities can be interpreted similarly to what kevin lancaster 1966 calls a characteristic the terminology used herein as an example consider tennis we buy racquets and balls not to own them per se but rather to enjoy playing the game playing the game actually generates utility and this characteristic is produced by an individual s racquet balls human capital skill level and time thus preferences are ordered over characteristics not over goods advertising can lower the shadow price of a characteristic by increasing the ability of the purchased good to produce the desired characteristic this is accomplished by providing the consumer with different information or beliefs about the product than previously held suppose a perennial tennis champion states a preference for a particular brand of racquet this enhances the self image of amateur owners of that brand and increases their enjoyment of the game without changing their expenditures the per unit cost of the characteristic will decline making current owners of the racquet likely repeat customers and current shoppers more likely to choose the star s preferred brand observe that advertising has increased the demand for a market good that produces the now cheaper char

pollution policy and trade liberalization of environmental goods during the doha round at the world trade organization reductions in trade barriers on environmental goods eg were put forward as a means of helping developed and developing countries alike deal with current environmental problems we examine the potential effectiveness of such a strategy in a developing country that imports all its consumption of eg from an imperfectly competitive foreign eco industry we point out that trade liberalization of eg might in fact lead to less stringent pollution taxes which can result in an actual rise in pollution levels we then show that the environmental effectiveness objective of this trade reform can be achieved when the regulator uses quantitative abatement standards as an alternative pollution policy instrument however this environmental achievement comes at the expense of social welfare

advertising and consumer search in a duopoly model we consider a duopoly in a homogenous goods market where part of the consumers are ex ante uninformed about prices information can come through two different channels advertising and sequential consumer search we arrive at the following results first there is no monotone relationship between prices and the degree of advertising second advertising and search are substitutes for a large range of parameters third when the cost of either search or advertising vanishes the competitive outcome arises finally both expected advertised and non advertised prices are non monotonic in search cost one of the implications is that firms actually may benefit from consumers having low rather than high search costs

advertising in competitive markets in this paper small firms sell a homogeneous good to small consumers under conditions of free entry but consumers receive price information only through firms advertising in equilibrium every firm on the continuous price distribution buys less advertising than is socially optimal the result is robust if firms advertise in just one medium if readers of different advertising media are positively correlated excess advertising can occur in media used exclusively to advertise discount prices copyright 1991 by american economic association

learning more from tobit coefficients extending a comparative analysis of political protest tobit analysis is the appropriate strategy for many sociological problems unfortunately clear procedures for interpreting its coefficients are not available using walton and ragin s 1991 tobit analysis of austerity protests in debtor nations i show that tobit coefficients can be decomposed into two effects 1 an effect representing an increase in the severity of protests in countries that have experienced protests and 2 an effect representing a change in the probability of experiencing an austerity protest in countries that recorded no protests finally an analogue to afully standardized regression coefficient is defined for tobit coefficients decomposing tobit coefficients reveals important additional findings that could not be discernedfrom the ordinary tobit coefficients

on the multiplicity of efficiency inducing tax rules abstract we derive corrective tax rules for a monopoly whose production processes generate emissions that add to a stock of pollution which evolves over time in our model the monopolist maximizes the discounted sum of its instantaneous profits and the government designs a tax rule that corrects for both the externalities associated with pollution and the market power of the monopolist we show that there exists a continuum of time independent tax rules that guide the monopolist to achieve the socially optimum production path

the grey paradox how fossil fuel owners can benefit from carbon taxation abstract this paper considers the distributional impact of optimal carbon taxation on fossil fuel owners a carbon emitting exhaustible resource competes with a dirtier abundant resource and a clean backstop a time dependent carbon tax is set to optimally use these resources under a cap constraint over co 2 atmospheric concentration as the cap is tightened the dirtier resource becomes less competitive compared to the exhaustible resource the competition effect but the timing and duration of extraction of the exhaustible resource is modified the timing effect we provide analytical expressions of these effects and determine conditions over size of reserves pollution contents extraction costs and demand elasticity such that the exhaustible resource owners profits increase as the ceiling is tightened calibrations for the transport and power sectors suggest that the profits of conventional oil and natural gas owners increase compared to a baseline without regulation for plausible carbon ceiling values

endogenous growth asymmetric trade and resource dependence the aggregate income of oil exporting countries relative to that of oil poor countries has been remarkably constant in recent decades despite the existence of structural gaps in productivity growth rates this stylized fact is rationalized in an endogenous growth model of asymmetric trade where resource poor and resource rich economies display productivity differences but stable income shares due to terms of trade dynamics the model yields two testable predictions that deserve empirical scrutiny i the asymmetric impact between exporters and importers of national taxes on resource use on income shares and ii the inverse relation between terms of trade dynamics and total factor productivity growth

equilibrium price distributions equilibrium price distributions for a homogeneous product consistent with individual incentives are investigated they arise in informationally imperfect markets in which the only primitive datum is the distribution of search costs it is shown that single multi and continuous price distributions are all viable long run phenomena depending on the nature of search costs a method for computing equilibrium price distributions is also provided jevons law of one price has long been an accepted dictum in economic theory in a classroom presentation it still serves sometimes implicitly as a major premise in many micro models of market interaction much of the descriptive theory as well as welfare analysis hinges on this assumption yet one s day to day experience reveals that price differentials are a viable phenomenon and that looking for lower prices may very well be a rewarding activity the prospects of eventually hitting a bargain and the resulting price reduction would more than compensate for the cost incurred during the search process moreover the existence of price dispersions appear to be an empirically stable phenomenon snapshots of markets for relatively homogeneous products reveal substantial and recurring price differentials stigler 1961 and pratt wise and zeckhauser 1979 for example report some evidence supporting this claim an important article by stigler 1961 focused economists attention on the crucial role played by the informational structure of markets it gave rise to the study of the

protectionist oil policies a dynamic comparison for the usa rising us oil imports have spawned a variety of policies for increasing energy security we provide a qualitative comparison of policies using a dynamic optimal control model thirty year price and output paths for opec and the usa are simulated assuming that us producers are competitive and opec is a dominant firm we find that the policies have quite different effects on imports and welfare the tariff reduces imports the most followed by the gasoline tax a per unit tariff and gasoline tax are costly in terms of us welfare whereas an ad valorem tariff can both lower imports and enhance us welfare

coordination economies advertising and search behavior in retail markets we introduce a model of the retail firm in which consumers and active firms benefit collectively from coordination of sales at fewer firms using this model we show that ostensibly uninformative advertising plays a key role in bringing about coordination economies by directing consumer search toward firms that offer the best deals optimal consumer search takes the form of a simple rule of thumb that uses observed advertising information to guide search both industry concentration and social surplus are higher in the presence of advertising relative to a no advertising benchmark jel d83 l15 many observed advertisements seem to be at odds with rational behavior in a variety of ads mostly on tv and radio multiproduct sellers provide little hard information choosing instead to impart only vague slogans that are suggestive of good deals examples are plentiful a hardware store

air passenger duties as strategic tourism taxation abstract there has been a recent debate on the rationale and economic impacts of air passenger duties apds linked to puzzling empirical results on this topic we argue that an approach from strategic tourism taxation can improve our understanding of these results apd set by origin countries of tourists can be viewed as an instrument for extracting economic rents that would otherwise be retained by tourism destinations a theoretical model of strategic taxation between an origin and two destinations is developed to illustrate this idea we find that countries strategies may end up with winners and losers or with all parties facing welfare losses the game outcome depends on countries market shares of profits and the substitutability between tourism services provided by different destinations the findings suggest that the economic impacts of apds recently evaluated in the literature might be biased because of the omission of other countries potential tax reactions

oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search n identical stores compete by choosing prices for a homogeneous good with constant marginal costs consumers search sequentially with perfect recall for the lowest price one class of consumers called shoppers have zero search costs while all other consumers have a positive search cost c there is a unique symmetric nash equilibrium price distribution with the property that it changes smoothly from marginal cost pricing when all consumers are shoppers and or c 0 and monopoly pricing when no consumers are shoppers remarkably as the number of stores increases the nash equilibrium becomes more monopolistic copyright 1989 by american economic association

advertising intensity and welfare in an equilibrium search model i analyze an equilibrium search model in a duopoly setting with bilateral heterogeneities in production and search costs in which firms can advertise by announcing price i compare the market advertising level to the socially optimal level where i find that costly search can improve welfare and that firms may under or over advertise relative to the social optimum depending on the costs of search the results suggest that in markets with sufficiently low search costs firms are likely over advertising relative to the socially optimal level and vice versa for markets with sufficiently high search costs

search market equilibrium bilateral heterogeneity and repeat purchases abstract we develop a general model of search market equilibrium with heterogeneous buyers and sellers this framework unifies previous models with one sided heterogeneity and clarifies many of their special properties it easily accounts for price dispersion active search and the matching of buyer and seller types it also extends to repeat purchases once we embed it into a dynamic game with incomplete information we formalize the inferences and strategies underlying equilibria where firms charge constant prices and customers patronize them loyally we establish a general correspondence between such equilibria and single purchase markets journal of economic literature classification numbers d83 l13

optimal fossil fuel taxation with backstop technologies and tenure risk abstract the paper derives the global welfare optimizing time path for a tax on fossil fuels causing a negative stock externality climate change under increasing marginal extraction cost and in the presence of an unlimited backstop resource causing no externality in a basic competitive case the optimal tax equals the pigou rate equivalent to the present discounted value of marginal damage costs we consider two separate types of tenure insecurity for resource owners and their impact on the tax implementing the optimal policy when insecure control is with respect to future ownership to the resource competitive extraction is higher than otherwise and the efficiency implementing tax exceeds the pigou rate when tenure insecurity instead implies possible expropriation holdup of investment in extraction capacity it deters extraction and the optimal tax is lower than the pigou rate

on capturing oil rents with a national excise tax this paper argues that since the supply of oil in the ground is inelastic the incidence of a sales tax on oil maintained forever at a fixed rate would fall entirely on the oil suppliers in the world economy however the elasticity of supply of oil to a single country depends on that country s imports as a share of world output and on the elasticity of demand for that country the paper calculates optimal tax rates for a country as a function of these variables and estimates optimal oil tax rates for the u s for some oecd countries separately and for the u s plus the oecd collectively current u s tax rates are shown to be far below optimal values

industrial pricing theory and managerial practice we organize the existing theoretical pricing research into a new two level framework for industrial goods pricing the first level consists of four pricing situations new product competitive product line and cost based the second level consists of the pricing strategies appropriate for a given situation for example within the new product pricing situation there are three alternative pricing strategies skim penetration and experience curve pricing there are a total of ten pricing strategies included in the framework we then identified a set of cost product market and information conditions which determine what pricing situation s a firm is facing as well as which strategies are appropriate within a given situation some of these determinant conditions are common to many pricing strategies e g highly elastic demand while others are unique to a given strategy within a particular pricing situation for example within the product line situation the profitability of supplementary sales is a unique determinant of the complementary product pricing strategy razor and blade pricing using this framework as a basis for an empirical study we examined how well current industrial pricing practice matches the prescriptions from the existing research our sample consisted of 270 respondents 27 response rate of these more than 50 indicated that they used more than one pricing strategy in formulating their most recent pricing decision for a high value industrial product sold in the united states as in previous research cost plus pricing was the most often cited pricing strategy 56 of the respondents since the respondents were able to indicate their use of more than one pricing strategy the data are of the pick k from n variety in order to model the managers pricing strategy choices we constructed a stacked binary logit with a separate observation for each strategy within a given pricing situation the signs of the determinant variables were estimated as interaction terms the new product pricing strategies skim penetration experience curve were used for new models in the market skim pricing was used in markets with high levels of product differentiation by firms at a cost disadvantage due to scale penetration pricing was used by firms with a cost advantage due to scale in markets with high level of overall elasticity but low brand elasticity experience curve pricing was used for minor innovations by firms with low capacity utilization in markets with a high level of differentiation the competitive pricing strategies leader parity and low price supplier were used in mature markets parity pricing was used by firms in a poor competitive situation i e high costs low market share low product differentiation these firms were also unable to take advantage of high levels of elasticity since their capacity utilization was high in contrast the low price supplier strategy was used by firmswith low costs due to scale advantages since they have low utilization these firms can take advantage of elastic brand demand none of the determinants were significantly related to the choice of leader pricing product line pricing strategies bundling complementary product and customer value pricing were more likely to be used by firms which sell substitute or complementary products bundle pricing was used for per sale contract pricing in markets with high levels of brand elasticity complementary product pricing razor and blade was used by firms that enjoyed high profitability on its supplementary sales using customer value pricing a firm offers a stripped down version of its current products to appeal to more price sensitive segments or to leverage new distribution channels this strategy was used to target a narrow segment in high growth markets where price changes are difficult to detect cost based pricing was more likely to be used in marketswhere demand is very difficult to estimate in such a situation cost based pricing makes a great deal of sense in general the results show that the managers pricing strategy choices are consistent with normative pricing research however questions about how managers combine their strategies to arrive at a final price as well as the organizational influences on pricing strategies remain important areas for future research

a stated preference approach to assessing health care quality improvements in palestine from theoretical validity to policy implications user fees have been promoted as a potential complementary funding mechanism for health care in developing countries in this paper we appraise the use of contingent valuation cv as a tool to help develop user fees schemes that could be used to assist in allocating and partially fund health care a random sample of 499 patients seeking care in primary health care centers in palestine were asked to reveal their willingness to pay values for specified improvements in the quality of delivered medical care empirical analysis suggests that in this context cv can lead to internally consistent results and useful policy implications

efficiency inducing taxation for a monopolistically supplied depletable resource author s bergstrom ted cross john porter dick abstract we show that for a depletable resource if the competitive time path of prices is known and if the profit function is concave then there is an easily described time path of taxes and or subsidies that would induce a monopolist to follow an efficient time path of extraction

informative price advertising in a sequential search model the purpose of this paper is to study the role and implications of price advertising when shopping trips are costly to consumers to do so we introduce advertising into an optimal sequential search model information about prices is both gathered by consumers and disseminated by firms consumers search sequentially and stores advertise with various intensity when it is in their interest to do so our model has a unique equilibrium exhibiting priee dispersion the model generates predictions about the shape of the price distribution and firms advertising behavior we explore the effects of entry and find that when initial advertising costs at zero level of effort are precisely zero entry drives the equilibrium to the perfectly competitive outcome however when initial marginal advertising costs are positive entry drives prices higher and while the informed consumers almost surely locate competitive prices welfare does not necessarily increase finally we compare the effectiveness of the two informational channels when advertising costs shrink prices become competitive however when search costs shrink prices remain bounded above marginal production costs

on efficiency inducing taxation for a non renewable resource monopolist the problem of using taxes to induce a monopolist supplier of a non renewable resource to extract efficiently has been solved under the assumption that the government has perfect information about the monopolist s cost function and reserves and is able to precommit to an entire sequence of taxes over time we extend this literature by constructing an efficiency inducing tax mechanism that does not require the government to have any information about the cost function or reserves and which does not require it to precommit to a sequence of taxes over time

optimal taxation of exhaustible resource under monopoly abstract this paper deals with the problem of using taxes or subsidies to correct the inefficient resource allocation under monopoly in this paper the question raised is what would be the optimal tax on resource extraction under monopoly ultimately it is shown that taxes may be devised to generate price and extraction paths under monopoly that are identical to those under the competitive equilibrium tax policy can thus be used as an instrument for changing the distortionary resource allocation generated by the monopolist

truly costly sequential search and oligopolistic pricing we modify the paper of stahl 1989 stahl d o 1989 oligopolistic pricing with sequential consumer search american economic review 79 700 12 by relaxing the assumption that consumers obtain the first price quotation for free when all price quotations are costly to obtain the unique symmetric equilibrium need not involve full consumer participation the region of parameters for which non shoppers do not fully participate in the market becomes larger as the number of shoppers decreases and or the number of firms increases the comparative statics properties of this new type of equilibrium are interesting in particular expected price increases as search cost decreases and is constant in the number of shoppers and in the number of firms welfare falls as firms enter the market we show that monopoly pricing never obtains with truly costly search d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

search price setting and inflation a model of monopolistic competition in an inflationary environment is developed which embodies optimal sequential search price dynamics and entry on the part of consumers and firms respectively equilibrium price strategies are s s these bounds increase continuously with consumer search costs and so does price dispersion indeed the whole equilibrium varies smoothly from the competitive bertrand to the monopolistic diamond 1971 end of the spectrum the latter s paradoxical result is explained as a limiting case where frictions on firms side of the market price adjustment costs but not on buyers search costs tend to zero a positive relationship between smooth and perfectly anticipated inflation and price dispersion or uncertainty is established

consumer information and firm pricing negative externalities from improved information we analyze the effect of consumer information on firm pricing in a model where consumers search for prices and matches with products we consider two types of consumers uninformed consumers do not know in advance their match values with firms whereas informed consumers do prices are lower the greater the proportion of uninformed consumers hence uninformed consumers exert a positive externality on the others in contrast to standard results this leads to socially excessive investment in gathering prior information when aggregate demand is price sensitive

a model of trade in exhaustible resources what distinguishes exhaustible resources from most other goods is not only their non renewable nature but also a combination of two other important characteristics related to their economic functions in their role as an input resources serve as an esseptial factor in the production of final goods moreover because their usefulness remains intact until they are consumed in the process of production they may also serve as a store of value in the absence of other types of marketable assets this latter characteristic enables the owner of the resource to achieve through optimal resource management his desired time profile of consumption corresponding to these two economic functions are two possible motives for international trade in exhaustible resources first in connection with their role as a productive input trade in resources promotes efficiency in the allocation of factors of production throughout the world economy on the basis of this motive for trade countries with a relatively high per capita endowment of the resource should be expected to export the resource in exchange for final goods second in connection with their asset function trade in resources may be viewed as a means of achieving efficiency in the intertemporal allocation of consumption goods among countries economies with a relatively high rate of time preference desire a relatively high ratio of current to future consumption accordingly impatient countries might be expected to import consumption goods in exchange for the resource in the present and export consumption goods in the future the interaction between these two motives for trade is examined in the present paper within a simple two period two country model traded objects are assumed to be an exhaustible resource and a single consumption good although the possibility of trade in consumption loans is also considered later in the paper the consumption good is produced in both countries with the aid of labor and the resource because the latter has the dual role of being a productive input as well as a store of value in the model international trade is viewed both as a means of reallocating the world s endowment of the resource so as to ensure

optimal taxation of a monopolistic extractor are subsidies necessary abstract this note reconsiders the optimal taxation problem when extraction of an exhaustible resource is monopolistic in a standard model i explicitly characterize and examine all the efficiency inducing paths of taxes subsidies on the resource consistently with the literature there is a family of such optimal paths in contrast with im 2002 it may not be necessary to subsidize the monopoly at any date within the family of optimal paths of taxes subsidies there may exist some paths along which the regulator raises positive revenues at all dates this illustrates how the static trade off between inducing efficiency and raising tax revenues in the presence of market power is relaxed under exhaustibility

on comparing monopoly and competition in exhaustible resource exploitation abstract it is widely believed that exhaustible resource monopolies do not enjoy as much market power as standard non resource monopolies and may even produce in a socially optimal way we argue that this paradoxical result arises from an inappropriate comparison methodology when similar assumptions are applied to the resource and the conventional cases we show that the resource monopoly behaves as expected i e restricts supply

information gatekeepers on the internet and the competitiveness of homogeneous product markets we examine the equilibrium interaction between a market for price information controlled by a gatekeeper and the homogenous product market it serves the gatekeeper charges fees to firms that advertise prices on its internet site and to consumers who access the list of advertised prices gatekeeper profits are maximized in an equilibrium where a the product market exhibits price dispersion b access fees are sufficiently low that all consumers subscribe c advertising fees exceed socially optimal levels thus inducing partial firm participation and d advertised prices are below unadvertised prices introducing the market for information has ambiguous social welfare effects

coase and hotelling a meeting of the minds in this paper we tie together the two literatures of durable goods monopoly and exhaustible resource pricing we show that the intertemporal no arbitrage condition that arises if the durable good monopolist seller can commit to a price path mirrors the intertemporal no arbitrage condition if the monopsonist buyer of an exhaustible resource can commit to a price path the intuition is that the durable good monopolist initially announces high future prices to get high valuation buyers to buy early and subsequently lowers the price to attract additional buyers on the other hand the monopsonist buyer of the exhaustible resource initially announces low future prices to encourage sellers to supply their units early and subsequently as the stock of the resource declines raises the price to call forth additional supply as the period of commitment shrinks to zero the durable good s price drops to its marginal cost and the exhaustible resource s price jumps to its choke level all in a twinkling of the eye a

optimality and consistency in a differential game with non renewable resources abstract imperfect competition amongst buyers for a non renewable resource is modeled as a stackelberg differential game the buyers may act as a cartel or behave non cooperatively in setting tariffs which the sellers take as given the buyer s optimal policy is not consistent when extraction costs depend on the stock level both optimal and consistent unit and ad valorem tariff s are analyzed when a buyers cartel uses a consistent tariff the sellers may prefer to behave as perfect competitors or a monopolist depending on the functional form of demand and cost non cooperative buyers who are constrained to act consistently are unable to extract any rent from competitive sellers