An experiment on risk taking and evaluation periods

investment;risk

Does Auctioning of Entry Licences Affect Consumers Prices? An Experimental Study

On an increasing scale auctions are used to allocate the licenses to operate on markets which are thought not suited for free entry.According to standard economic arguments, the license fees paid at the auction will not affect consumer prices since they constitute a sunk cost.This standard view is not uncontested though.In the present paper we experimentally investigate two arguments for a potential upward effect of auctioning of prices: the incorporation of entry fees in prices due to the use of mark-up pricing rules, and the tendency of auctions to select the more collusive firms.Our results indicate that auctioning increases the probability of high prices, and that this is mainly due to the use of mark-up pricing rules.

Transparency, Prices and Welfare with Imperfect Substitutes

Markets that are not completely transparent feature complex comparative statics with respect to the effect of number of firms, elasticity of substitution between goods and degree of transparency on equilibrium prices.The main result is that the following 'common wisdom' is incorrect: more transparent markets always feature lower prices, higher consumer welfare and lower price disperion.market structure;prices;welfare