spatial competition and vertical integration cement and concrete revisited reply in this review 1983 mark mcbride reconsiders the federal trade commission s ftc enforcement policy toward vertical mergers between cement and ready mix concrete firms in response to a significant increase in acquisitions of ready mix concrete firms by cement manufacturers during the 1960 s the ftc undertook a series of legal actions to block or dissolve the mergers the actions of the ftc constituted one of the most intensive efforts undertaken to date to challenge vertical mergers in a single industry mcbride p 1012 notes that the actions of the ftc provoked considerable debate concerning the motivation for the mergers both in the industry and in academe a significant number of articles were published advancing various reasons for the mergers in addition to the ftc s main contention that the mergers were motivated by a desire for captive markets it has been suggested that there were economies of integration or that the mergers were the outcome of an erroneous view of the potential benefits to foreclosure held by executives in the beleaguered cement industry 2 mcbride s 1983 paper offers another explanation for the mergers his argument is that vertical integration was undertaken to avoid rigid oligopolistic pricing in the cement industry 3 the empirical results presented by mcbride suggest that vertical integration was a significant factor in the decline of cement prices in the 1960 s the purpose of this comment is to point out some of the problems with mcbride s analysis in particular we show that the experimental design of his testing equation is faulty and does not offer a test of his hypothesis as a result mcbride s analysis does not provide convincing evidence on whether cement firms vertically integrated to avoid rigid oligopolistic pricing or if cement firms were merely reacting to prices that had already begun to decline our intent however is not to challenge mcbride s contention that vertical integration can provide lower prices to consumers rather we would argue that the evidence presented at the ftc hearings involving cement and ready mix concrete firms as well as mcbride s and others analyses illustrate the problems in discerning the motives for mergers 4

mergers acquisitions and innovation performance in the telecommunications equipment industry the worldwide telecommunications equipment industry has experienced an enormous number of mergers and acquisitions m a this article examines the innovation determinants of m a activity a

do tax incentives for saving in pension accounts cause debt accumulation evidence from danish register data abstract this paper applies a quasi experimental research design on a danish 2010 policy that reduced tax incentives for saving in annuity pension schemes to show significant substitution of savings from retirement accounts to gross debt repayments we find that for every 1 danish currency unit reduction in retirement savings 31 cents goes to debt repayments taking into account all types of savings we find full crowding out consistent with previous findings we document that the effect is driven by a minority about 23 percent who actively rebalance their savings

environmental policy and stable collusion the case of a dynamic polluting oligopoly we show that the imposition of a markovian tax on emissions that is a tax rate which depends on the pollution stock can induce stable cartelization in an oligopolistic polluting industry this does not hold for a uniform tax thus accounting for the feedback effect that exists within a dynamic framework where pollution is allowed to accumulate into a stock over time changes the result obtained within a static framework moreover the cartel formation can diminish the welfare gain from environmental regulation such that welfare under environmental regulation and collusion of firms lies below that under a laissez faire policy

why do defaults affect behavior experimental evidence from afghanistan we report on an experiment examining why default options impact behavior by randomly assigning employees to different varieties of a salary linked savings account we find that default enrollment increases participation by 40 percentage points an effect equivalent to providing a 50 matching incentive we then use a series of experimental interventions to differentiate between explanations for the default effect which we conclude is driven largely by present biased preferences and the cognitive cost of thinking through different savings scenarios default assignment also changes employees attitudes toward saving and makes them more likely to actively decide to save after the study concludes

basing point pricing and production concentration basing point pricing is a delivered price system in which the price quoted for delivery of a commodity is the sum of the price quoted at a predetermined basing point plus the cost of transportation from the basing point to the point of delivery whether or not the commodity is actually shipped from the basing point thus a seller who is not located at the base site absorbs freight for shipments toward the base point and charges phantom freight on shipments away from the base point basing point pricing has been widely practiced throughout the world for example testimony of the federal trade commission before the tnec i 94 i p 33 alleged that industries in the united states which then or previously followed basing point pricing included lumber iron and steel pig iron cement lime brick asphalt shingles and roofing window glass white lead metal lath building tile floor tile gypsum plaster bolts nuts and rivets cast iron soil pipe range boilers valves and fittings sewer pipes paper and paper products salt sugar corn derivatives industrial alcohol linseed oil fertilisers chemicals transportation equipment and power cable almost from its inception economists have generally considered basingpoint pricing to reflect a cartel or price leadership arrangement hoover i937 stigler i949 machlup i949 and such practices have been attacked under antitrust statutes for example aetna portland cement co vs ftc i 57 f 2nd 533 i946 triangle conduit cable co vs ftc i68 f 2nd i 75 7th cir i 948 cement institute vs ftc i57 f 2nd 533 i948 nonetheless basing point pricing remains prevalent particularly outside the united states opec has used a gulf based price plus transport costs to determine the delivered prices of crude oil to most places in the world haddock i982 p 290 the pricing of cement in great britain and steel in europe can be characterised as multibase point systems greenhut i987 recent attempts by for example haddock i982 to return to the theme that the basing point system could be competitive and desirable have been challenged by thisse and vives i988 and benson et al i990 on the basis of recent advances in the analysis of pricing policy given then that we assume basing point pricing to be a collusive device adopted by incumbent firms to impose some kind of price discipline on potential entrants the price leadership point referred to above important strategic and locational issues arise in particular a major concern of the early analysis of basing point pricing was the effect such a pricing policy would have on location choice of entrant firms

taxpayers responses to tax based incentives for retirement savings evidence from the saver s credit notch abstract this paper uses the saver s credit to analyze taxpayers understanding of and responses to tax incentives the saver s credit is a tax credit designed to encourage retirement savings among low and middle income households however the credit s structure creates notches or discontinuous jumps within a household s budget constraint these notches provide an incentive to manipulate adjusted gross income to fall just below the level where the credit decreases i use public use tax files from the internal revenue service to test whether taxpayers bunch their income at the notch created by the saver s credit i find strong evidence that bunching occurred in response to the credit which implies that taxpayers claiming the credit understood the incentives for bunching and indeed manipulated their incomes accordingly i then exploit the discontinuity in credit rates to analyze the credit s impact on retirement contribution behavior using a regression discontinuity approach and find that the credit failed to generate a statistically significant effect on the level of retirement contributions these results imply that the saver s credit is more effective at providing transfers to low and middle income taxpayers than at increasing retirement contributions

expectations the commons and optimal group size abstract this article derives a formula for the optimal number of exploiters of a commons whose output is sold in an imperfectly competitive market and whose exploiters hold nonzero or non nash conjectures we express the optimal number of exploiters in terms of the conjecture the elasticity of input productivity and the price elasticity of market demand consistent conjectures those that agree with reality imply the full tragedy of the commons and zero profits for the exploiters

savings in times of demographic change lessons from the german experience pension reforms in many developed countries make individuals shoulder a bigger share of longevity and income risks the desired response is that individuals accumulate private assets for retirement whether this actually takes place is of paramount relevance for scientists and policy makers we take germany as an example twenty years of pension reform have transformed the monolithic german pension system into a multi pillar system formerly generous public pension benefits are gradually being reduced while substantial incentives are granted to occupational and private saving schemes has this transition worked out we survey the reform steps and household s reactions how did individuals adjust their labor market behavior how did private and occupational pension plans take off how do behavioral adjustments vary in the population most germans adapted to the new situation both actual and expected retirement decisions changedand the share of households without supplementary pensions decreased from 73 to 39 in little more than a decade this is a remarkable success nonetheless households with low education low income and less financial education did neither adjust their retirement behavior nor pick up supplementary pension plans and are thus likely to face difficulties in bridging the gap arising in future pension income

the budgetary and welfare effects of tax deferred retirement saving accounts abstract the present paper analyzes the budgetary macroeconomic and welfare effects of tax deferred retirement saving accounts similar to u s 401 k plans in a dynamic general equilibrium overlapping generations economy with heterogeneous households because of the initial deferral of tax payments the short run budgetary cost of tax deferred accounts is significantly higher than the long run cost therefore the budget neutral introduction of tax deferred accounts would make current and near future households worse off although it would increase national wealth and total output in the long run if the government spread the short run cost to future households by increasing debt the policy change could make all age cohorts on average as well off as the economy without tax deferred accounts due to increased government debt and debt service costs however national wealth and total output would decrease in the long run thus introducing tax deferred accounts would not increase national wealth and improve social welfare at the same time this is partly because the policy change is regressive and reduces the risk sharing effect of the current income tax system

on the internal contradictions of the law of one price as stated originally the venerable law of one price succinctly describes long run equilibrium in a perfectly competitive market the law was later amended defining a market as the geographic area within which the same thing sells for the same price at the same time allowance being made for transportation costs modified in that way the law has two plausible interpretations by one interpretation every production site is a market by the other prices in fact do not differ by transportation costs the transportation cost amendment thus introduces internal contradictions that render the revised law of one price either useless or wrong jel d40 l10 a market according to the masters is the area within which the price of a commodity tends to uniformity allowance being made for transportation costs that is two places are in the same market for a good if the prices at the two places differ by transportation costs stigler 1987 77 economic terms seem to pass in their historical development through a series of stages which without pretension to rigidness may be described as follows first no definition is given but it is assumed that every one has a sufficiently clear idea of the subject to make a formal definition unnecessary second a definition is attempted and a number of exceptional forms are noted third with the further increase of data the relative importance of the various forms changes confusion in discussion is introduced logomachy takes the place of constructive investigation fourth a complete classification of the forms embraced under the original term is made and problems are investigated with reference to these classes the bewildering vagueness of economic theory is largely due to the fact that the terms used are in all of these stages of development moore 1906 211 i introduction delineating the boundaries of markets engaged economists attention early on many product attributes are important to consumers but price is an objectively measurable margin along which rivalry is sharply engaged market prices transmit information about changing demand and supply conditions to buyers and sellers and widening price cost margins signal profit opportunities to which alert entrepreneurs respond price consequently has held center stage in economists attempts to define markets augustin cournot 1927 51 for instance wrote that a market is the entire territory of which the parts are so united by the relations of unrestricted commerce that prices take the same level throughout with ease and rapidity alfred marshall 1930 325 supplied a similar definition in his celebrated declaration that the more nearly perfect a market is the stronger is the tendency for the same price to be paid for the same thing at the same time in all parts of the market more recently joseph stiglitz 1993 19 summarized what he called the law of the single price stating that under this law there is a uniform price in the market and price differences are quickly eliminated by arbitrage 1 marshall 1930 325 introduced an important qualification however when he observed that but of course if the market is large allowance must be made for the expense of delivering the goods to different purchasers each of whom must be supposed to pay in addition to the market price a special charge on account of delivery that qualification subsequently found its way into stigler s price theory textbook quoted in the epigraph intentionally or not the law of one price was thereby converted into a law of different prices other economists subsequently added transaction costs and information costs to the list of caveats culminating in a multiplicity of prices nevertheless claimed to be consistent with the law of one price economics has few laws

do 401 k contributions crowd out other personal saving during the late 1980s contributions to 401 k plans eclipsed contributions to individual retirement accounts iras as the leading form of tax deferred individual retirement saving in the united states in this paper we describe patterns of participation in 401 k plans contrast these patterns with ira participation and evaluate the net impact of 401 k contributions on personal saving we find that 401 k participation conditional on eligibility exceeds 60 at all income levels in contrast ira participation at the height of that program rose sharply with income we use two methods to evaluate the net saving effect of 401 k contributions on personal saving we compare the financial assets of families who are eligible for 401 k saving with the assets of those who are not eligible and we consider the change over time in the assets of like groups of savers we find little evidence that 401 k contributions substitute for other forms of personal saving including ira contributions

tax reform and retirement saving incentives take up of stakeholder pensions in the uk in april 2001 the uk government introduced stakeholder pensions a new private pension arrangement the reform also changed the structure of tax relieved pension contribution ceilings increasing their generosity for lower earners we examine the impact of these changes on private pension coverage using individual level data we use a difference in differences strategy with an estimator that is modified to allow for dichotomous outcomes contrary to the conventional wisdom that the stakeholder pension reforms had little or no impact on saving behaviour our results indicate that the change to the contribution ceilings affected private pension coverage rates among lower earners especially among women

stackelberg versus cournot a differential game approach abstract we propose an infinite horizon differential oligopoly game where at each point in time m stackelberg leaders and n m stackelberg followers exploit a common pool renewable resource and sell their harvest in the marketplace at a price that depends on total harvest we derive a feedback generalized stackelberg nash cournot equilibrium a generalization of the feedback stackelberg equilibrium nesting feedback stackelberg and feedback cournot as special cases we proceed with a comparison between the feedback stackelberg and the feedback cournot equilibria and find a number of interesting results in contrast with static oligopoly theory as to the relative efficiency of the two equilibria we show that the cournot equilibrium can be more efficient than the stackelberg equilibrium this holds true in the short run at the steady state and in terms of discounted welfare

participation in and contributions to 401 k pension plans evidence om plan data k plans differ from traditional employer sponsored pension plans in that employees are permitted to make voluntary pre tax contributions hence the sensitivity of participation and contributions to plan charac teristics notably the employer matching rate may play a critical role in retirement saving using plan level data from form 5500s filed annu ally with the internal revenue service ifind that substantial increases occur when an employer moves from a zero to a small or moderately sized match but that at higher match rates employee contributions fall

does 401 k eligibility increase saving evidence from propensity score subclassification abstract by comparing 401 k eligible and ineligible households wealth this paper estimates that on average about one half of 401 k balances represent new private savings and about one quarter of 401 k balances represent new national savings responses to eligibility vary considerably however with households who normally save the most largely contributing funds they would have saved anyway this paper improves on previous research by 1 employing propensity score subclassification to control more completely for observed household characteristics 2 controlling for more household characteristics including several correlated with unobserved savings preferences and 3 adjusting the observed measure of households wealth to reduce measurement error

social welfare in a common property oligopoly output in a markov nash cournot equilibrium to a noncooperative differential game in which in oligopolists extract a common property nonrenewable resource is bounded by the output of in firm and in i firm static oligopolies we discuss the welfare effects of the number of firms and of the divergence between private and social discount rates we compare extraction under the markov and open loop equilibria and then offer an explanation for the possibility that the resource is exhausted instantaneously in a continuous time game this explanation does not depend on the fact that the period of commitment is infinitesimal this essay models the extraction by an oligopolistic industry of a common property nonrenewable resource we characterize the markov perfect equilibrium mpe in a game amongst firms and then provide general conditions under which the resource is exhausted instantaneously if there is unrestricted access to a resource agents perceive its shadow value to be 0 and extract too rapidly when access is restricted to a finite number of agents in none of whom possess exclusive property rights an additional complication may arise if firms behave as oligopolists in the product market they have an incentive to extract the resource too slowly in order to increase the price thus where m firms exploit a resource in the absence of property rights there are conflicting tendencies the absence of property rights encourages excessive exploitation whereas the finite number of firms encourages insufficiently rapid exploitation there are a number of situations where the lack of property rights and the presence of market power coexist examples include i national fisheries which are large enough to affect fish populations and output prices ii common exploitation of aquifers or rivers where individual use affects the price of an agricultural output or of another input iii production by oligopolistic firms which degrades the environment we consider the case of nonrenewable resources such as oil this implies a simple equation of motion for the stock of the resource and emphasizes the role of the number of firms and the stock size such models are often appropriate even if the resource is not literally nonrenewable for example tropical forests or groundwater aquifers are potentially renewable given enough time as indeed oil deposits may be however the rate of replenishment may be insignificant given

inefficiency of credible strategies in oligopolistic resource markets with uncertainty abstract the implications of different information patterns for firms in oligopolistic resource markets are considered the traditional open loop nash equilibrium with static information sets is one of many possible nash equilibria and is not suitable for stochastic environments when shocks to resource growth are serially uncorrelated there are no gains from conditioning the harvest on past stock levels and the feedback or credible nash equilibrium is the appropriate nash equilibrium concept this credible equilibrium assumes that firms have knowledge of current stocks of reserves which typically leads to more rapid extraction of the resource and possibly extinction since the open loop nash equilibrium is efficient when demand is iso elastic and extraction costs are zero it is clear that an increase in information can be detrimental to firms in the industry

an open access fishery with rational expectations explain the evolution of the fish stock and the boat fleet as well as determine their equilibrium levels 2 while the changes in the fish stock are described by a biological rule entry and exit from the fishing industry are determined by how expectations are formed we examine a general model in which entry and exit are proportional to the present value of expected profits and compare two special cases of adaptive myopic expectations and rational expectations although both expectations mechanisms lead to the same equilibrium values they lead to different adjustment paths where expectations solely depend on current values myopic expectations it is well known that boats enter the fishery only when the fish stock is greater than its steady state stock 3 with rational expectations however boats may enter when the fish stock is much lower than its steady state value provided the boat fleet is sufficiently small this difference in adjustment is observable and in principle leads to an obvious test on how agents form expectations section 2 develops a general dynamic model for studying fisheries in section 3 we show that the model standardly used in the literature is equivalent to a myopic adaptive expectations model a rational expectations model is analyzed in section 4 the standard and rational expectations models are compared in section 5 section 6 illustrates this comparison using a simulation based on a schaefer model of the pacific halibut fishery section 7 presents the conclusions

on the basing point system comment in on the basing point system bruce benson melvin greenhut and george norman 1990 1 properly correct a misunderstanding by jacques thisse and xavier vives 1988 2 concerning my 1982 paper on basing point prices but bgn then take exception with several of the conclusions i had reached or that they thought i had reached although i have insufficient space to deal with all the points they raise i will address the most important ones in 1981 most economists believed that a model of profit maximizing basing point pricing would have to assume collusion my model as bgn seem to agree showed that it need not atomistic competition at one production site accompanied by local monpolies elsewhere may lead to basing point pricing and freight absorption without collusion 3 conversely tv showed that the practice as observed empirically will not arise if all production sites contain noncooperative local monopolies bgn establish yet another important theoretical result noncooperative oligopoly at one site could generate the f o b prices or f o b plus transport that in my model led local monopolies elsewhere to adopt freight absorbing basing point prices the three models would seem to be complements i a paradox

efficiency inducing tax for a common property oligopoly the author characterizes the markov perfect tax that induces a common property oligopoly to extract efficiently a nonrenewable resource for linear and isoelastic demand he provides closed form expressions of the unique specific tax industry profits may be higher or lower in the oligopoly with the tax relative to the competitive equilibrium with property rights for linear or isoelastic demand there exists no feasible open loop tax that induces efficient extraction in this case the policymaker gains no advantage from being able to make binding commitments copyright 1992 by royal economic society

on the oligopolistic extraction of non renewable common pool resources in recent literature the extraction of common pool resources ha s been discussed under the aspect of whether or not they can be used efficiently when a finite number of agents has access to the resource the objective of this paper is the derivation of a necessary equilibrium condition in a simple model this condition has severe consequences for existence propositions in papers of m c kemp and n v long 1980 j mcmillan and h w sinn 1984 and j f reinganum and n l stokey 1985 copyright 1986 by the review of economic studies limited

a discrete long term location price problem under the assumption of discriminatory pricing formulations and parametric analysis we consider a competitive location problem in which a new firm has to make decisions on the locations of several new facilities as well as on its price setting in order to maximise profit under the assumption of discriminatory prices competing firms set a specific price for each market area the customers buy one unit of a single homogeneous price inelastic product from the facility that offers the lowest price in the area the consumers belong to three customer choice rules are considered in order to break ties in the offered prices we prove that considering long term competition on price this problem can be reduced to a problem with decisions on location only for each one of the choice rules the location problem is formulated as an integer programming model and a parametric analysis of these models is given to conclude an application with real data is presented

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

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

appropriation of common access natural resources through exploration the relevance of the open loop concept in this paper the open loop equilibrium is rehabilitated as a sensible concept for analyzing common property situations in a model of natur al resource exploration in which the sole motivation to explore prior to extraction arises from a strategic incentive to preempt competito rs a consistency rule to the exploration game is applied under which the commonality of reserves is preserved even if strategies are open loop under this rule the so often claimed efficiency of the common property open loop equilibrium is lost copyright 1988 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

on the basing point system reply david d haddock s 1990 contention is really that the jacques f thisse and xavier vives 1988 and the bruce l benson melvin l greenhut and george norman 1990 papers do not provide a collusive model that yields base point pricing bpp he apparently believes his paper 1982 established competitive bpp and suggests in 1990 that the collusive model and hard empirical work alone remain however no collusive model is required since it has already been well demonstrated in the literature on plant location and spatial price theory that firms at feasible distance locations from a production center would accept bpp only because they fear that to do otherwise would subject them to retaliatory actions by the larger more powerful firms at the production center moreover the paper by thisse vives 1988 henceforth tv and benson greenhut norman 1990 henceforth bgn indicated sufficiently that other systems would arise than haddock s competitive bpp especially since the restrictive conditions necessary for the latter militate against its use haddock in fact appears to accept these conditions in his references to arthur r burns proposals 1936 of nearbase point pricing nbpp hard empirical analysis would indeed be in order in determining the extent of nbpp not competitive bpp this paper responds to the above noted issues in three main sections section i briefly provides some historical data on the collusive uses of bpp for any future researcher who seeks empirically to uncover a

catching up or crowding out the crowd out effects of catch up retirement contributions on non retirement saving abstract using tax data this paper exploits a discontinuous increase in retirement contribution limits based on exact date of birth this paper finds clear evidence that constrained individuals increase their retirement saving when so eligible but finds no evidence suggesting that non retirement saving falls in the baseline specifications one can rule out crowd out greater than approximately 0 38 to 0 57 at the 95 confidence level depending on the measure used this suggests that the additional contributions induced by catch up eligibility represent an increase in total private saving

assessing the effectiveness of saving incentives concluding that iras and 401 k s do increase saving this text provides a fresh cost benefit approach for analyzing the success of savings incentives it compares the new savings to the government tax revenue lost through contributions to iras and 401 k s

active vs passive decisions and crowd out in retirement savings accounts evidence from denmark using 41 million observations on savings for the population of denmark we show that the effects of retirement savings policies on wealth accumulation depend on whether they change savings rates by active or passive choice subsidies for retirement accounts which rely on individuals to take an action to raise savings primarily induce individuals to shift assets from taxable accounts to retirement accounts we estimate that each 1 of government expenditure on subsidies increases total saving by only 1 cent in contrast policies that raise retirement contributions if individuals take no action such as automatic employer contributions to retirement accounts increase wealth accumulation substantially we estimate that approximately 15 of individuals are active savers who respond to tax subsidies primarily by shifting assets across accounts 85 of individuals are passive savers who are unresponsive to subsidies but are instead heavily influenced by automatic contributions made on their behalf active savers tend to be wealthier and more financially sophisticated we conclude that automatic contributions are more effective at increasing savings rates than subsidies for three reasons i subsidies induce relatively few individuals to respond ii they generate substantial crowd out conditional on response and iii they do not increase the savings of passive individuals who are least prepared for retirement jel codes h2 h3

oligopoly extraction of a common property natural resource the importance of the period of commitment in dynamic games the theory of noncooperative dynamic games has provided an extremely powerful framework for studying many of the classic questions in industrial organization for example questions about resource extraction advertising research and development investment in new capacity and barriers to entry where interactions over time among few firms are involved however an important methodological issue arises when economic competition over time is modeled as a dynamic game the issue is the appropriate formulation of the players strategy spaces

the effects of 401 k participation on the wealth distribution an instrumental quantile regression analysis we use instrumental quantile regression approach to examine the effects of 401 k plans on wealth using data from the survey of income and program participation using 401 k eligibility as an inst

mill pricing versus spatial price discrimination under bertrand and cournot spatial competition this paper asks two questions about spatial competition first does spatial price discrimination lead to lower prices and higher welfare than mill pricing if firms hold the bertrand conjecture the answer is yes for most values of fixed cost but for the cournot conjecture the opposite is true second does the introduction of space into the oligopoly models of bertrand and cournot change their results the answer is generally no however spatial bertrand prices exceed marginal cost unlike their spaceless counterparts these answers are obtained using models of spatial competition of which the cournot mill pricing models are new in spatial competition significant transport costs and economies of scale bestow market power upon firms this paper addresses two questions about spatial competition first does spatial price discrimination yield lower prices and higher social welfare producer plus consumer surplus than fo b mill pricing under spatial price discrimination differences in the delivered prices charged by a firm bear no necessary relationship to differences in transport costs in contrast a mill pricing firm sets a single price at its plant and customers bear the cost of transport this paper answers this question for the cases in which firms adopt the bertrand or cournot conjectures concerning how rivals will react to price and output changes this question is important because of the superficial appeal of mill pricing which stems from its imitation of the spatial structure of marginal costs the presence of spatial price discrimination by contrast is often considered to be evidence of the presence of market power at least in part for these reasons the us robinson patman antitrust act and great britain s price commission favor mill pricing nevertheless spatial price discrimination remains ubiquitous in the us europe and japan greenhut 1981 the second question is how does the introduction of space into the original oligopoly models of cournot and bertrand change their results cournot

the effects of pension funds on markets performance a review the worldwide reforming process of pension systems triggered by the demographic transition and globalization has led several countries to implement multi pillar pension systems and enhance pension funds for this reason the studies on the effects that pension funds exert on markets performance have been flourishing in the last decades in this paper we provide an updated review of the empirical advances in this field of study with particular focus on the effects that pension funds produce on labour markets financial markets and economic growth

international aspects of pollution control pollution is a by product of production is only gradually dissolved by the environment and crosses national borders the market outcome ignores the adverse effects of pollution and thus yields higher levels of output and pollution than would prevail under a supranational social planner which does care about pollution in practice governments often do not cooperate and this leads to outcomes of pollution and production in between the market outcomes and the outcomes under supra national social planning absence of precommitment leads to lower emission charges less cleaning up activities and more pollution appropriate levels of emission charges under the various outcomes are a result of this analysis attention is also paid to investment in clean technology the debate between optimists who believe that higher production is compatible with sound environmental policy and pessimists can be analysed in this way