contracts as a barrier to entry it is shown that an incumbent seller who faces a threat of entry into his or her market will sign long term contracts that prevent the entry of some lower cost producers even though they do not preclude entry completely moreover when a seller possesses superior information about the likelihood of entry it is shown that the length of the contract may act as a signal of the true probability of entry

are different vintages of data on the components of gdp co integrated some evidence for the united kingdom abstract the process of data revision is often an extensive one giving rise to different time series on the same variable with potentially different properties in this study we ask whether different vintages of data are cointegrated and find for our data set on the income components of united kingdom gdp that this is not always the case although in general later vintages are more likely than earlier vintages to be co integrated with the final vintage a lack of co integration favours rejection of the view that preliminary vintages are efficient forecasts of the final vintage

the state dependence of output revisions abstract this paper investigates whether economic activity dynamics predict gdp revisions using panel data from 15 oecd countries we find that economic activity predicts gdp revisions early releases tend to overestimate gdp growth during slowdowns and vice versa we also find that the source of the predictability could be related to the sampling of information collection finally the predictability comes from short term economic activity dynamics rather than business cycle position

the welfare effects of third degree price discrimination in the author examines third degree price discrimination by an upstream monopolist in an intermediate good market discrimination is motivated by the fact that downstream firms differ in their abilities to integrate backward into supply of the input the author shows that under reasonable specifications of equilibrium price discrimination leads to all buyers facing higher input prices in other cases discrimination raises some prices and lowers others the author derives conditions under which discrimination lowers welfare by reducing total output and shows that in some markets discrimination will raise welfare by preventing socially inefficient backward integration copyright 1987 by american economic association

on the optimal pricing policy of a monopolist the paper presents a simple explanation of price dispersion by a monopolist assuming only that consumers arrive in a random order and are served on a first come first served basis a firm can sometimes increase its profits by charging two different prices for the same good and rationing sales at the lower price however it is never necessary to charge more than two prices and a single price is sufficient as long as either the marginal revenue curve is everywhere downward sloping or the marginal cost of production is constant

exclusionary pricing when scale matters we consider an incumbent firm and a more efficient entrant both offering a network good to several asymmetric buyers and both being able to price discriminate the good has positive value to buyers only if the network size exceeds a certain threshold the incumbent s installed base guarantees this critical size to the incumbent while the entrant needs to attract enough new buyers to meet this threshold we show that price discrimination in the various forms it may take reduces the set of achievable socially efficient entry equilibria and discuss the policy implications of this result

cooperatives as entrants a potential shortcoming of game theoretic models in industrial organization is their failure to consider consumers as players we introduce a customer coalition a cooperative as a potential entrant and compare the cooperative entry threat with that posed by the usualforprofit entrant we identify four fundamental distinctions between cooperative andfor profit entrants and demonstrate that the strategic interplay between a cooperative and an incumbent firm may differ markedly from that between the incumbent and a for profit entrant the results impart a prospectively powerful role to potential cooperatives in beneficially regulating free market performance

first announcements and real economic activity the recent literature suggests that first announcements of real output growth in the us have predictive power for the future course of the economy while the actual value of output growth does not we show that this need not point to a behavioural relationship whereby agents respond to perceptions instead of the truth but may instead simply be a by product of the data revision process the revisions to the initial estimates which define the final values of the observations are shown to be key in determining any relationship between first announcements and the future course of the economy c 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

corporate sustainability reporting index and baseline data for the cruise industry sustainability policies and corporate reports demonstrate the impacts cruise companies acknowledge as their responsibility and the actions put in place to address them this paper develops a corporate social responsibility index based on the global reporting initiative with industry specific additions including labor and human rights health and safety and environmental and economic aspects companies disclose more management than performance data which is typical of early stages of development companies disclosing less information focus on soft indicators which are easy to mimic and demonstrate posturing items disclosed tend to be marginal to the core of the business have a positive economic impact or pre empt sector regulation reports echo the voice of the corporations and not the demands of stakeholders institutional isomorphism has not influenced a homogenization in reporting with only the largest firms reporting at this stage

data revisions are not well behaved we document the empirical properties of revisions to major macroeconomic variables in the united states our findings suggest that they do not satisfy simple desirable statistical properties in particular we find that these revisions do not have a zero mean which indicates that the initial announcements by statistical agencies are biased we also find that the revisions are quite large compared to the original variables and they are predictable using the information set at the time of the initial announcement which means that the initial announcements of statistical agencies are not rational forecasts

chicken and egg competition among intermediation service providers we analyze a model of imperfect price competition between intermediation service providers we insist on features that are relevant for informational intermediation via the internet the presence of indirect network externalities the possibility of using the nonexclusive services of several intermediaries and the widespread practice of price discrimination based on users identity and on usage efficient market structures emerge in equilibrium as well as some specific form of inefficient structures intermediaries have incentives to propose non exclusive services as this moderates competition and allows them to exert market power we analyze in detail the pricing and business strategies followed by intermediation services providers copyright 2003 by the rand corporation

crop insurance in a political economy an alternative perspective on agricultural policy lawmakers often subsidize farmers in times of financial distress this article models this political impulse as a constraint on government farm policy describing how ex ante government farm insurance can deter ex post disaster relief and improve production incentives by countering the moral hazard that otherwise prevails absent ex ante government policy ex post relief takes the form of revenue insurance which prompts excessive entry into farm production and under production by operating farmers ex ante government policy can raise economic and political welfare by buying out low productivity farmers and offering profitable farmers a combination of revenue insurance price supports and a program participation fee copyright 2003 oxford university press

are preliminary announcements of the money stock rational forecasts abstract we develop a theoretical framework of analyzing preliminary announcements of economic data and then apply this framework to the money stock we find that preliminary announcements of the money stock are best characterized as measured with classical errors in variables that is the revision is not correlated with the true value of the series the revision is however forecastable using information available at the time of the preliminary announcement our ability to forecast the revision implies that preliminary announcements are not rational estimates of the true money stock

price discrimination and social welfare studies the effect of price discrimination on social welfare using methods from duality theory features of the reservation model presented quasi linear utility and consumers surplus upper and lower bounds on welfare change bounds on welfare change with optimal price discrimination from ebsco

the effect of gnp announcements on fluctuations of gnp growth abstract this paper is an empirical study of the degree in which perceptions affect the evolution of the economy we study the effects of the announcements that the government makes on gnp growth these announcements are subject to a substantial degree of noise and its accuracy improves with time a revised number is published several years after the first announcement was made public we consider that the final revision is the true value of gnp growth we show that once announcements are taken into account the true value of gnp growth at time t has no predictive power in determining growth at any future time all the predictive power lies in the announcements and not in the true level of growth actually we show that the variable that determines future growth is the unexpected part of the announcements we also show that announcements affect growth via aggregate investment

determinants of cser practices for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the perspectives of administrative managers in tour operators abstract responsible corporate action has long been recognized as a vital step toward sustainability recently this notion has also been introduced in tourism practices consequently researchers have gradually become involved in exploring how tourism cser is practiced what might motivate it and the relationship between financial performance and accredited actions however studies have primarily focused on the hospitality airline and cruise industries and been geographically limited to europe and north america in order to fill this research gap this study measures taiwanese tour operators cser activeness in reducing ghg emission according to a comprehensive set of items ranging from firm operation to destination management particularly an extended tpb model has been employed to examine significant predictors of cser performance from the perspective of administrative managers the findings indicate that managers attitudes regarding the benefits to the society and company interests are the most important predictors of business operations supply chain and destination management in cser practices respectively the age of tourism business also plays an important role this study contributes to the theoretical enhancement of cser and tpb also several practical suggestions are proposed in this study that will enhance the cser profiles of tour operators

corporate social responsibility the disclosure performance gap as increased stakeholder pressure requires companies to be transparent about their csr practices it is essential to know how reliable corporate disclosure mechanisms are testing the gap between corporate social responsibility claims and actual practice this study benchmarks corporate social responsibility policies and practices of ten international hotel groups of particular importance to the european leisure market we found that corporate systems are not necessarily reflective of actual operations environmental performance is eco savings driven labour policies aim to comply with local legislation socio economic policies are inward looking with little acceptance of impacts on the destination and customer engagement is limited generally larger hotel groups have more comprehensive policies but also greater gaps in implementation while the smaller hotel groups focus only on environmental management and deliver what they promised as the first survey of its kind in tourism both the methodology and the findings have implications for further research

consumer strategies limiting the monopolist s power multiple and joint purchases i characterize the menu of bundles price quantity combinations offered by a monopolist when consumers can buy several bundles share bundles with others or do both in a two type setting i find that although perfect arbitrage prevents any price discrimination partial arbitrage in the form of multiple or joint purchases may actually lead to more pronounced price discrimination than when consumers can only pick one single bundle further clear predictions emerge for the price pattern contrasting with the existing literature with multiple purchases only the firm offers strict quantity discounts with joint purchases only discounts are infeasible

exclusionary contracts and competition for large buyers abstract this paper reconsiders the analysis of the competitive effects of buyer contracts in contrast to the previous literature we do not impose ex ante asymmetry on the contracting opportunities of firms rather we consider a market composed of two segments involving small anonymous and large non anonymous buyers while the large buyers can contract with each other and any firm in the market it is assumed that no such opportunities exist for the small buyers that is neither the large buyers nor firms can make contractual commitments with small buyers firms must supply these buyers based on arms length single price oligopolistic competition in this environment we demonstrate that large buyers will have an incentive to form a coalition with a single firm so as to extract rents from the small customer segment market dominance results the outcome is socially suboptimal as either production takes place at a higher cost than is otherwise possible or there is a monopoly for small buyers with an associated allocative loss

customer coalitions monopoly price discrimination and generic entry deterrence abstract this paper analyzes the interplay between a profit maximizing monopolist and a set of consumers who are able to form coalitions that bargain with the monopolist and or integrate into production we show that the monopolist will deter the formation of these countervailing coalitions through strategic selection of generic limit price offers to each consumer these limit prices are derived as subgame perfect equilibria in two alternative models of customer monopoly interplay in both models price discrimination emerges in environments wherein it has previously been considered unprofitable welfare analysis of the equilibria demonstrates the procompetitive effects of potential customer coalitions and generally provides an efficiency based motivation for a government ban on price discrimination

two part pricing with costly arbitrage this paper considers the optimal two part pricing strategy of a monopolist whose customers collude when they purchase the firm s product in contrast to the sentiment in the existing price discrimination literature i find that a monopolist s profit can actually increase when consumers share its good when transaction costs for collusion are zero the firm can extract the full consumer surplus through two part prices when transaction costs are positive or there are a substantial number of consumers without access to resale the firm may be hurt by arbitrage

the most favored nation pricing policy and negotiated prices previous work has viewed the most favored nation mfn contract as a practice capable of facilitating collusion among sellers but this paper shows that even a monopoly seller may gain by including the mfn provision in sales contracts we consider a case in which the seller negotiates price separately with each of two buyers by including a mfn clause in her contract with the first buyer the seller raises her cost of granting price concessions to the second buyer this increases the seller s bargaining strength with respect to the second buyer thereby helping her negotiate a higher price

news and noise in g 7 gdp announcements revisions to gdp announcements are known to be quite large in all g 7 countries quarterly growth rate revisions are regularly more than a full percentage point at an annualized rate we examine the predictability of these revisions using standard statistical tests of whether the preliminary announcement is a rational forecast of the subsequently revised data previous work suggests that u s gdp revisions are largely unpredictable as would be the case if the revisions reflect news not available at the time that the preliminary number is produced we find that the degree of predictability varies throughout the g 7 although we find little predictability in u s revisions the data revisions for several foreign countries are highly predictable we also perform a simple real time forecasting exercise showing that for several countries the predictability of data revision could be used to generate improved preliminary data