4,286 research outputs found
Quality Sensitive Price Competition in Spectrum Oligopoly
We investigate a spectrum oligopoly where primary users allow secondary
access in lieu of financial remuneration. Transmission qualities of the
licensed bands fluctuate randomly. Each primary needs to select the price of
its channel with the knowledge of its own channel state but not that of its
competitors. Secondaries choose among the channels available on sale based on
their states and prices. We formulate the price selection as a non-cooperative
game and prove that a symmetric Nash equilibrium (NE) strategy profile exists
uniquely. We explicitly compute this strategy profile and analytically and
numerically evaluate its efficiency. Our structural results provide certain key
insights about the unique symmetric NE.Comment: Presented in ISIT' 2013, Istanbul Version 2 contains some modified
versions of proofs of version 1. In IEEE Proceedings of International
Symposium on Information Theory, 201
The effect of competition among brokers on the quality and price of differentiated internet services
Price war, as an important factor in undercutting competitors and attracting customers, has spurred considerable work that analyzes such conflict situation. However, in most of these studies, quality of service (QoS), as an important decision-making criterion, has been neglected. Furthermore, with the rise of service-oriented architectures, where players may offer different levels of QoS for different prices, more studies are needed to examine the interaction among players within the service hierarchy. In this paper, we present a new approach to modeling price competition in (virtualized) service-oriented architectures, where there are multiple service levels. In our model, brokers, as the intermediaries between end-users and service providers, offer different QoS by adapting the service that they obtain from lower-level providers so as to match the demands of their clients to the services of providers. To maximize profit, players, i.e. providers and brokers, at each level compete in a Bertrand game while they offer different QoS. To maintain an oligopoly market, we then describe underlying dynamics which lead to a Bertrand game with price constraints at the providers' level. Numerical simulations demonstrate the behavior of brokers and providers and the effect of price competition on their market shares.This work has been partly supported by National Science Foundation awards: CNS-0963974, CNS-1346688, CNS-1536090 and CNS-1647084
Quality Sensitive Price Competition in Spectrum Oligopoly:Part 1
We investigate a spectrum oligopoly market where primaries lease their
channels to secondaries in lieu of financial remuneration. Transmission quality
of a channel evolves randomly. Each primary has to select the price it would
quote without knowing the transmission qualities of its competitors' channels.
Each secondary buys a channel depending on the price and the transmission
quality a channel offers. We formulate the price selection problem as a non
co-operative game with primaries as players. In the one-shot game, we show that
there exists a unique symmetric Nash Equilibrium(NE) strategy profile and
explicitly compute it. Our analysis reveals that under the NE strategy profile
a primary prices its channel to render high quality channel more preferable to
the secondary; this negates the popular belief that prices ought to be selected
to render channels equally preferable to the secondary regardless of their
qualities. We show the loss of revenue in the asymptotic limit due to the non
co-operation of primaries. In the repeated version of the game, we characterize
a subgame perfect NE where a primary can attain a payoff arbitrarily close to
the payoff it would obtain when primaries co-operate.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. 41
pages single column format.Conference version is available at arXiv:1305.335
IMPERFECT COMPETITION AND STRATEGIC TRADE THEORY: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED
International Relations/Trade,
The effect of (non-)competing brokers on the quality and price of differentiated internet services
Price war, as an important factor in undercutting competitors and attracting customers, has spurred considerable work that analyzes such conflict situation. However, in most of these studies, quality of service (QoS), as an important decision-making criterion, has been neglected. Furthermore, with the rise of service-oriented architectures, where players may offer different levels of QoS for different prices, more studies are needed to examine the interaction among players within the service hierarchy. In this paper, we present a new approach to modeling price competition in (virtualized) service-oriented architectures, where there are multiple service levels. In our model, brokers, as intermediaries between end-users and service providers, offer different QoS by adapting the service that they obtain from lower-level providers so as to match the demands of their clients to the services of providers. To maximize profit, players, i.e. providers and brokers, at each level compete in a Bertrand game while they offer different QoS. To maintain an oligopoly market, we then describe underlying dynamics which lead to a Bertrand game with price constraints at the providers’ level. We also study cooperation among a subset of brokers. Numerical simulations demonstrate the behavior of brokers and providers and the effect of price competition on their market shares.Accepted manuscrip
The 700 MHz Spectrum Auction: An Opportunity to Protect Competition In a Consolidating Industry
Auctions, spectrum auctions, market design
Vertical foreclosure: a policy framework
Whenever you phone your mother, switch on the light, or buy health insurance you purchase a service or product from a chain of vertically related industries. Providers of these products or services need access to a telecommunications network, an electricity network or to health care services. In such industries, integration and exclusive contracts between vertically related firms may have important welfare enhancing effects, but can also deny or limit rivals' access to input or customers, leading to foreclosure. Foreclosure can harm welfare if it reduces competition. This document provides policymakers with a framework to assess the potential for welfare reducing foreclosure of vertical integration and vertical restraints and describes possible remedies. The framework consists of four steps. Each step requires its own detailed analysis. First, market power should exist either upstream or downstream. Second, a theory of foreclosure should be formulated that explains why foreclosure is a profitable equilibrium strategy. Third, the existence and magnitude of potential welfare enhancing effects of the vertical restrains or vertical integration should be assessed. Fourth, suitable policies to address foreclosure should be found.
Uncertain Price Competition in a Duopoly with Heterogeneous Availability
We study the price competition in a duopoly with an arbitrary number of
buyers. Each seller can offer multiple units of a commodity depending on the
availability of the commodity which is random and may be different for
different sellers. Sellers seek to select a price that will be attractive to
the buyers and also fetch adequate profits. The selection will in general
depend on the number of units available with the seller and also that of its
competitor - the seller may only know the statistics of the latter. The setting
captures a secondary spectrum access network, a non-neutral Internet, or a
microgrid network in which unused spectrum bands, resources of ISPs, and excess
power units constitute the respective commodities of sale. We analyze this
price competition as a game, and identify a set of necessary and sufficient
properties for the Nash Equilibrium (NE). The properties reveal that sellers
randomize their price using probability distributions whose support sets are
mutually disjoint and in decreasing order of the number of availability. We
prove the uniqueness of a symmetric NE in a symmetric market, and explicitly
compute the price distribution in the symmetric NE.Comment: 45 pages, Accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction on Automatic
Contro
Why Every Economist Should Learn Some Auction Theory
This is an Invited paper for the World Congress of the Econometric Society held in Seattle in August 2000. We discuss the strong connections between auction theory and "standard" economic theory, and argue that auction-theoretic tools and intuitions can provide useful arguments and insights in a broad range of mainstream economic settings that do not, at first sight, look like auctions. We also discuss some more obvious applications, especially to industrial organization.Auctions, Bidding, Auction Theory, Private Values, Common Values, Mechanism Design, Litigation, Stock Markets, Queues, Financial Crashes, Brand Loyalty, War of Attrition, Bertrand, Perfect Competition, E-Commerce, Spectrum Auctions, Treasury Auctions, Electricity
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