Strategic Delays of Delivery, Market Separation and Demand Discrimination

We show that an adequate choice of delays to deliver a durable good allows a monopolist to soften the intra-brand price competition between his two retailers on two different markets, when consumers suffer a switching cost to buy on the market where they are not located. To prevent each retailer from selling on both markets, the upstream producer increases the delay of delivery on the market where the willingness to pay is the lowest. It therefore separates the markets across time, by orientating consumers to the appropriate downstream retailer. Consumers pay their highest valuation, and a price differential higher than the switching cost persists in equilibrium. We discuss the application of our findings to the European car market.durable good, switching cost, discrimination, intrabrand competition, European car market

The Costs and Benefits of "Strangers": Why Mixed Communities Are Better

Much of the literature on diversity assumes that individuals have an exogenous "taste for discrimination". In contrast with this approach, we build a model where preferences over the nature of one's community are derived indirectly, and arise because the composition of the community determines the behavior of its members. This allows us to gain a far deeper understanding of the forces that underpin the desirability of diversity or homogeneity within communities. Our main contribution is to show that there are always counteracting forces (heterogeneity involves both costs and benefits), and that, although people prefer to live in communities where their type is majoritarian, they always benefit from having some heterogeneity in the composition of their community.heterogeneity, social interactions, value of information, complementarities.

Strategic delays of delivery, market separation and demand discrimination

We show that an adequate choice of delays to deliver a durable good allows a monopoly to reduce competition between his two retailers on two different markets. Instead of preventing each retailer from selling on both markets, the producer separates the markets by directing the choices of consumers between the retailers. The consumer whose willingness to pay is the lowest obtains the good later than the other, and both pay their highest valuations for the good: the producer perfectly discriminates the demand. The European car market where producers try to restrict competition between retailers is an application of our findings.delivery delays, discrimination, market separation, vertical restraints, European car market

Monopoly Behaviour with Speculative Storage

We analyze the effects of competitive storage when the production of the good is controlled by a monopolist. The existence of competitive storers serves to reduce the monopolist’s effective demand when speculators are selling and to increase it when they are buying. This results in the monopolist manipulating the frequency of stock-outs, and hence, the price-smoothing effects of competitive storage. We use a two-period model to show that there is a lower probability of a stock-out under a monopolist than in a perfectly competitive market. We find that there exist states of the world in which the monopolist prices higher on average than what would occur in the absence of speculators. We then extend the model to an infinite horizon to examine the implications for price volatility using collocation methods to approximate both the expected future price and the expected value function. We confirm that stock-outs occur less frequently under the monopolist, even though price is more volatile. We also demonstrate that while free entry by speculators does reduce the gap in price volatility, it does not remove it.

Evaluation of the Risks of Collective Dominance in the Audit Industry in France

The financial crisis drew attention to the crucial role of transparency and the independence of financial certification intermediaries, in particular, statutory auditors. Now any anticompetitive practice involving coordinated increases in prices or concomitant changes in quality that impacts financial information affects the effectiveness of this intermediation. It is therefore not surprising that the competitive analysis of the audit market is a critical factor in regulating financial systems, all the more so as this market is marked by various barriers to entry, such as the incompatibility of certification tasks with the preparation of financial statements or consulting, the expertise on (and the ability to apply) international standards for the presentation of financial information, the need to attract top young graduates, the prohibition of advertising, or the two-sided nature of this market where the quality of financial information results from the interaction between the reputation of auditors and audited firms. Against this backdrop, we propose a legal and economic study of the risks of collective dominance in the statutory audit market in France using the criteria set by Airtours case and, in particular, by analyzing how regulatory obligations incumbent on statutory auditors may favour the appearance of tacit collusion. Our analysis suggests that nothing prevents collective dominance of the auditors of the Big Four group in France to exist, which is potentially detrimental to the economy as a whole as the audit industry may fail to provide the optimal level of financial information.Airtours criteria; audit industry; collective dominance