Capacity Constraint, Price Discrimination, and Oligopoly

In the presence of market power in oligopolistic environment, price discrimination is a natural phenomenon. Surprisingly this setting has not been analyzed in depth in the literature. In contrast with existing literature, e.g., Hazledine (2006) and Kutlu (2009), we consider quantity setting games where firms compete in two stages. In the first stage firms decide on the choice of capacity and in the second stage they decide on the structure of price discrimination where the level of price discrimination is exogenous. In contrast to Hazledine (2006) we find that in the Cournot framework the quantity-weighted average price depends on the level of price discrimination. We also find that in the Stackelberg framework both the leader and the follower price discriminate as opposed to Kutlu (2009) which concludes that the leader doesn't price discriminate. Moreover, it is discovered that both the players (even the follower) prefer to be in the Stackelberg framework rather than the Cournot framework when price discrimination exists. Comparing welfare under various settings, it is found that competition is not always good for the total welfare if price discrimination exists. desirable axioms.

Greenhouse Gas Emission Efficiencies of World Countries

Greenhouse gas emissions have increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. This has led to an unnatural increase in the global surface temperature, and to other changes in our environment. Acknowledging this observation, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change started an international environmental treaty. This treaty was extended by Kyoto protocol, which was adopted on 11 December 1997. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we analyze the efficiencies of countries in terms of achieving the lowest greenhouse gas emission levels per GDP output in the years between 1990–2015. We find that the average greenhouse gas emission efficiencies of world countries for the time periods 1990–1997, 1998–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2015 are 82.40%, 90.37%, 89.54%, and 84.81%, respectively. Moreover, compared to the 1990–1997 period, 92.50%, 79.51%, and 59.84% of the countries improved their greenhouse gas emission efficiencies in the 1998–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2015 periods, respectively. Hence, the Kyoto protocol helped in increasing greenhouse emission efficiency. However, this efficiency-boosting effect faded away over time

Calculating efficiency for spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model

When there are efficiency spillovers, we can use a spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model to estimate total (spillover-corrected) efficiencies. Glass et al. (2016) provide a formula for total efficiency in this context, which is an approximation. We provide the exact formula for the spillover-corrected efficiency. Moreover, we derive total, direct, and indirect marginal effects of environmental variables on spillover-corrected efficiency

Estimating efficiency in a spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model

The spatial autoregressive stochastic frontier model of Glass et al.(2016) is based on distributional assumptions on two-sided and one-sided error terms. After estimating the model parameters, the efficiency estimates need to be corrected due to the presence of spatial autoregressive term in their model. Glass et al.(2016) estimate the corrected efficiencies by employing ideas from a distribution-free method on the efficiency estimation, which may be sensitive to outliers. We propose an alternative way to correct efficiency estimates that is in line with the distribution-based methods

Battese-coelli estimator with endogenous regressors

We provide a framework for dealing with the endogeneity problem in the Battese-Coelli estimator for productive efficiency measurement

A distribution-free stochastic frontier model with endogenous regressors

We provide a guideline for estimating a distribution-free panel data stochastic frontier model in the presence of endogenous variables. In particular, we consider variations of the within estimator of Cornwell et al. (1990) to allow endogenous regressors

Greenhouse Gas Emission Inefficiency Spillover Effects in European Countries

In our study, we examine whether spatial spillover effects exist for greenhouse gas emission efficiency for 38 European countries between 2005 and 2014. We find that inefficiencies of other countries would lead to lower efficiency levels for a country. This negative inefficiency spillover effect goes down till 2008 then goes up till 2011, then stays relatively stable after 2011. Any strategy to reduce inefficiencies of other countries could potentially improve the efficiency levels. We find that human development index shows significant positive impact on greenhouse gas emission efficiency levels. In particular, one standard deviation increase in human development index would lead to a 11.12 percentage points increase in the greenhouse gas emission efficiencies on average. Different countries show different efficiency levels and efficiency growth patterns over time. However, the pattern of spatial spillover is quite similar among all countries over time

Estimation of cost efficiency without cost data

One of the advantages of conduct parameter games is that they enable estimation of market power without total cost data. In line with this, we develop a conduct parameter based model to estimate the firm specific “marginal cost efficiency” and conduct without using total cost data. The marginal cost efficiency is an alternative measure of efficiency that is based on deadweight loss. We illustrate our methodology by estimating firm-route-quarter specific conducts and marginal cost efficiencies of U.S. airlines for Chicago based routes without using route-level total cost data

The effect of corruption control on efficiency spillovers

We examine the effect of corruption control on efficiency and its implications for efficiency spillovers by a stochastic frontier model. Our dataset covers 102 countries from 1996 to 2014. We find a positive relationship between corruption control and efficiency. If neighboring countries have difficulty in handling corruption, the country would be negatively affected by its neighbors\u27 corruption through efficiency spillovers. We then compare the efficiency differences across countries for three time periods: 1996–2002, 2002–2008, and 2008–2014. On average, technical efficiencies slightly increased in the second period compared to the first period. In the third period, the efficiencies declined, particularly in China