Monopolistic Competition (monopolistic + competition)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


A MODEL OF MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION WITH PERSONAL INCOME DISPERSION

METROECONOMICA, Issue 3 2005
Corrado Benassi
ABSTRACT We introduce non-homothetic preferences in the Dixit,Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition, and enquire about the effects of a change in income dispersion on the firms' optimal decisions and market equilibrium. Income dispersion, modeled as a mean preserving spread, is shown to affect only the degree of product differentiation under the standard negligibility hypothesis on the firms' decision making process, while it generates a positive co-movement of demand and demand elasticity, when this assumption is removed and the price index effect is taken into account. [source]


MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION WITH EFFICIENCY GAPS AND A HECKSCHER-OHLIN TRADE PATTERN,

THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2006
TORU KIKUCHI
We develop a two-factor, three-sector model of international trade in which the monopolistically competitive firms are characterized by different fixed production costs. We show that, depending on the pattern of the international distribution of factor endowments, the trade pattern is determined not only by relative factor endowments as suggested by Heckscher and Ohlin, but also by absolute factor endowments via a mechanism of competitive selection in the monopolistically competitive sector. [source]


International Commodity Taxation under Monopolistic Competition

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 3 2004
Andreas Haufler
We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a two-country trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and international firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rents accruing to capital owners. With consumption-based taxation, these fiscal externalities exactly offset each other and the non-cooperative tax equilibrium is Pareto efficient. With production-based taxation, however, there are additional externalities on the foreign tax base and the foreign price level that lead non-cooperative tax rates to exceed their Pareto efficient levels. [source]


Monopolistic Competition, Growth and Public Good Provision,

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 534 2009
Paul Pecorino
In the standard model, provision of a pure public good is increasing in group size if it is a normal good. I develop a model of public good provision in which private goods are supplied in a monopolistically competitive market. In this model, group size corresponds to population. I find that increases in population lead to reduced public good provision. The reason is quite simple: as population increases, the number of private goods available for consumption also increases. This raises the marginal utility of income and increases the opportunity cost of contributing to the public good. [source]


Country-Specific Communications Networks and International Trade in a Model of Monopolistic Competition,

THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 2 2002
TORU KIKUCHI
First page of article [source]


The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity

ECONOMETRICA, Issue 6 2003
Marc J. Melitz
This paper develops a dynamic industry model with heterogeneous firms to analyze the intra-industry effects of international trade. The model shows how the exposure to trade will induce only the more productive firms to enter the export market (while some less productive firms continue to produce only for the domestic market) and will simultaneously force the least productive firms to exit. It then shows how further increases in the industry's exposure to trade lead to additional inter-firm reallocations towards more productive firms. The paper also shows how the aggregate industry productivity growth generated by the reallocations contributes to a welfare gain, thus highlighting a benefit from trade that has not been examined theoretically before. The paper adapts Hopenhayn's (1992a) dynamic industry model to monopolistic competition in a general equilibrium setting. In so doing, the paper provides an extension of Krugman's (1980) trade model that incorporates firm level productivity differences. Firms with different productivity levels coexist in an industry because each firm faces initial uncertainty concerning its productivity before making an irreversible investment to enter the industry. Entry into the export market is also costly, but the firm's decision to export occurs after it gains knowledge of its productivity. [source]


Competition Tests with a Non-Structural Model: the Panzar,Rosse Method Applied to Germany's Savings Banks

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2009
Horst Gischer
Banking; competition; market behaviour Abstract. In this paper we adopt the Panzar,Rosse approach to assess the competitive conditions in the German banking market for the period from 1993 to 2002. We suggest several improvements to the empirical application of the approach and show that frequently used empirical models that apply price rather than revenue functions lead to biased results. Using disaggregated annual data from more than 400 savings banks (Sparkassen) the empirical findings indicate monopolistic competition, the cases of monopoly and perfect competition are strongly rejected. Furthermore, small banks seem to enjoy even more market power than larger institutions. [source]


On the Effects of Wage Pressure on the Unemployment Rate and Capital Share

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 4 2006
Takashi Ohno
Wage pressure; increasing returns to scale; unemployment; capital share Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to understand the behaviour of the capital share and the unemployment rate in Europe over the past quarter of a century. We consider a model with monopolistic competition, increasing returns and an imperfect labour market, assuming that the elasticity between capital and labour is less than unity. Previous works have generally assumed constant returns to scale. Our results offer an important conclusion, namely that increased wage pressure will increase the unemployment rate and the capital share even though the latter initially decreases, which fits the stylized facts about the studied economies. [source]


Market Size, Technology Choice, and Market Structure

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
Walter Elberfeld
We introduce technology choice into a model of monopolistic competition and analyze the structural effects of changes in market size. A larger market leads to the adoption of a large-scale technology. If a technology switch occurs, the number of firms decreases, and a rationalizing effect arises: individual and aggregate output increases; prices fall. This need not benefit consumers since a technology switch is associated with a decrease in product variety. [source]


Business Formation and Aggregate Investment

GERMAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 1 2001
Christian Keuschnigg
The paper proposes an intertemporal equilibrium model of vintage capital and monopolistic competition. Reflecting a tradeoff between the number and capacity of new machines, investment may be extensive or intensive. External gains from specialization and rationalization result in distorted investment decisions. The paper compares the effectiveness of a general investment tax credit with a start-up subsidy that shifts the direction of investment towards a more extensive form. An optimal policy of investment promotion is derived. [source]


Pricing Access to a Monopoly Input

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 4 2004
David S. Sibley
What price should downstream entrants pay a vertically integrated incumbent monopoly for use of its assets? Courts, legislators, and regulators have at times mandated that incumbent monopolies lease assets required for the production of a retail service to entrants in efforts to increase the competitiveness of retail markets. This paper compares two rules for pricing such monopoly inputs: marginal cost pricing (MCP) and generalized efficient component pricing rule (GECPR). The GECPR is not a fixed price, but is a rule that determines the input price to be paid by the entrant from the entrant's retail price. Comparing the retail market equilibrium under MCP and GECPR, the GECPR leads to lower equilibrium retail prices. If the incumbent is less efficient than the entrant, the GECPR also leads to lower production costs than does the MCP rule. If the incumbent is more efficient than the entrant, however, conditions may exist in which MCP leads to lower production costs than does the GECPR. The analysis is carried out assuming either Bertrand competition, quantity competition, or monopolistic competition between the incumbent and entrant in the downstream market. [source]


International Commodity Taxation under Monopolistic Competition

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 3 2004
Andreas Haufler
We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a two-country trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and international firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rents accruing to capital owners. With consumption-based taxation, these fiscal externalities exactly offset each other and the non-cooperative tax equilibrium is Pareto efficient. With production-based taxation, however, there are additional externalities on the foreign tax base and the foreign price level that lead non-cooperative tax rates to exceed their Pareto efficient levels. [source]


Employment Adjustment at the Firm Level.

LABOUR, Issue 1 2002
A Theoretical Model, an Empirical Investigation for West German Manufacturing Firms
In this paper, employment adjustment at the firm level is estimated with a large panel of business survey data from West German manufacturing. The specification is based on a framework of monopolistic competition in the product market. Special emphasis is devoted to the analysis of the impact of demand uncertainty, capacity constraints, technological change and competition. The empirical results reveal that demand uncertainty and capacity constraints significantly affect employment adjustment. Innovative firms are more successful; they increase employment and exhibit a higher utilization of capacities. Employment adjustment also depends on competition. In monopolistic markets, the volatility of employment is higher. [source]


A MODEL OF MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION WITH PERSONAL INCOME DISPERSION

METROECONOMICA, Issue 3 2005
Corrado Benassi
ABSTRACT We introduce non-homothetic preferences in the Dixit,Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition, and enquire about the effects of a change in income dispersion on the firms' optimal decisions and market equilibrium. Income dispersion, modeled as a mean preserving spread, is shown to affect only the degree of product differentiation under the standard negligibility hypothesis on the firms' decision making process, while it generates a positive co-movement of demand and demand elasticity, when this assumption is removed and the price index effect is taken into account. [source]


Price and Variety in the Spokes Model,

THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 522 2007
Yongmin Chen
The spokes model of nonlocalised spatial competition provides a new analytical tool for differentiated oligopoly and a representation of spatial monopolistic competition. An increase in the number of firms leads to lower equilibrium prices when consumers have relatively high product valuations, but, surprisingly, to higher equilibrium prices for intermediate consumer valuations. New entry alters consumer and social welfare through price, market expansion, and matching effects. With free entry, the market may provide too many or too few varieties from a social welfare perspective, and the equilibrium price remains above marginal cost even when the number of firms is arbitrarily large. [source]


Product Market Competition, Insider Trading, and Stock Market Efficiency

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE, Issue 1 2010
JOEL PERESS
ABSTRACT How does competition in firms' product markets influence their behavior in equity markets? Do product market imperfections spread to equity markets? We examine these questions in a noisy rational expectations model in which firms operate under monopolistic competition while their shares trade in perfectly competitive markets. Firms use their monopoly power to pass on shocks to customers, thereby insulating their profits. This encourages stock trading, expedites the capitalization of private information into stock prices and improves the allocation of capital. Several implications are derived and tested. [source]


MIXED INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE AND SHORT-RUN FISCAL MULTIPLIER

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 2 2008
ROBERTO CENSOLO
Existing studies on the fiscal multiplier under imperfect competition assume a symmetric market structure with identical firms. This paper examines the fiscal policy implications of introducing a multisectoral economy, where a composite commodity is offered in many varieties within a market of monopolistic competition and a homogeneous good is produced in a perfectly competitive environment. Within the context of this mixed industrial structure we show that the size of the short-run multiplier crucially depends on the composition of public expenditure chosen by the government. [source]