Endogenous price leadership

We consider a linear price setting duopoly game with di®erentiated products and determine endogenously which of the players will lead and which will follow. While the follower role is most attractive for each firm, we show that waiting is more risky for the low cost firm so that, consequently, risk dominance considerations, as in Harsanyi and Selten (1988), allow the conclusion that only the high cost firm will choose to wait. Hence, the low cost firm will emerge as the endogenous price leader.Price leadership, endogenous timing, risk dominance

Endogenous price leadership

duopoly;game theory;pricing;price leadership

Endogenous price leadership

We consider a linear price setting duopoly game with differentiated products and determine endogenously which of the players will lead and which will follow. While the follower role is most attractive for each firm, we show that waiting is more risky for the low cost firm so that, consequently, risk dominance considerations, as in Harsanyi and Selten (1988), allow the conclusion that only the high cost firm will choose to wait. Hence, the low cost firm will emerge as the endogenous price leader.Price leadership, endogenous timing, risk dominance

Endogenous Price Leadership with Asymmetric Costs: Experimental Evidence

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from SAGE Publications via the DOI in this recordThis paper presents experimental evidence on the action commitment game with cost-asymmetric firms in a differentiated-products Bertrand duopoly. Unlike its quantity-setting counterpart, the risk-dominant leader–follower equilibrium Pareto dominates the simultaneous-move equilibrium. This equilibrium also minimizes payoff differences between firms. Hence, one would expect the model to accurately capture behavior. The evidence partially supports the theory: low-cost firms price in the first period more often than high-cost firms, and depending on the treatment, between 40 and 57 per cent of all observations conform to equilibrium play. However, the modal timing outcome involved both firms delaying their pricing decision. This timing outcome is characterized by Nash play and some collusion. The high frequency of delaying decisions could be due to a desire to reduce strategic uncertainty

Endogenous Price Leadership: A Bargaining Model of International Telecommunications Settlements

This article develops a noncooperative bargaining model to address the effects of the uniform settlements policy (USP) in international telecommunications. The model predicts that the USP is more likely to increase (decrease) access charges in markets where, under the USP, U.S. firms carry more (less) outbound than inbound traffic. This is due to the model's more general prediction that forbidding price discrimination may allow an upstream monopolist to credibly commit to a take-it or leave-it intermediate product price. Two brief case studies from the international telegraph market lend support to this prediction.Center for Research on Economic and Social Theory, Department of Economics, University of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100894/1/ECON345.pd

Endogenous Price Leadership - A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis

We present a model of price leadership on homogeneous product markets where the price leader is selected endogenously. The price leader sets and guarantees a sales price to which followers adjust according to their individual supply functions. The price leader clears the market by serving the residual demand. As price leaders, firms with different marginal costs induce different prices. We compare two mechanisms to determine the price leader, majority voting and competitive bidding. According to the experimental data at least experienced price leaders with lower marginal costs choose higher prices. In the bidding treatment, compensation payments to the price leader crowd in efficiency concerns

Endogenous Timing of Moves in Bertrand-Edgeworth Triopolies

We determine the endogenous order of moves in which the firms set their prices in the framework of a capacity-constrained Bertrand-Edgeworth triopoly. A three-period timing game that determines the period in which the firms announce their prices precedes the price-setting stage. We show for the non-trivial case (in which the Bertrand-Edgeworth triopoly has only an equilibrium in non-degenerated mixed-strategies) that the firm with the largest capacity sets its price first, while the two other firms set their prices later. Our result extends a finding by Deneckere and Kovenock (1992) from duopolies to triopolies. This extension was made possible by Hirata's (2009) recent advancements on the mixed-strategy equilibria of Bertrand-Edgeworth games

Endogenous choice of decision variables

In this paper we allow the firms to choose their prices and quantities simultaneously. Quantities are produced in advance and their common sales price is determined by the market. Firms offer their “residual capacities” at their announced prices and the corresponding demand will be served to order. If all firms have small capacities, we obtain the Bertrand solution; while if at least one firm has a sufficiently large capacity, the Cournot outcome and a model of price leadership could emerge