Demand Uncertainty, Market Structure, and Competition in Availability

需求不确定性、市场结构和可用性竞争

• 批准号: 9905143
• 负责人: James Dana
• 金额: $ 7.17万
• 依托单位: Northwestern University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-08-01 至 2001-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9905143&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Demand; Uncertainty; Market; Structure; Competition

This research will study the effects of aggregate demand uncertainty on retail and consumer service markets when prices do not necessarily clear markets. Inflexible prices imply potential stockouts so, when there are costs of shopping, consumers will choose where to shop based on both price and availability (the probability of finding the good in stock). While availability is often ignored in economics models, it is a genuine concern for consumers and firms in a wide variety of retail and consumer service industries. For example, companies who regularly advertise availability are car dealers, video rental chains, mail order suppliers, department stores, and appliance stores. The work will initially focus on answering two questions that arise in models of availability (or service rate) competition. The first question is how market structure, prices, and availability are determined when firms compete in availability but their capacity or inventory (and therefore availability) is unobservable to consumers. This research will answer this question by extending existing models of competition when availability is observable to consider oligopoly inventory choice with asymmetric information. Using a game theoretic model, the work will ask how prices and availability are determined when consumers use price as a signal of availability. In a variety of static models (corresponding to Bertrand and Cournot timings) the work will show that firms charge high prices and earn supra-competitive profits (even in the limit as the market structure becomes arbitrarily competitive). Dynamic extensions in which consumers learn over time and firms acquire reputations for high availability are proposed. The second question is how manufacturer-retailer contracts, specifically royalty or revenue sharing contracts, can correct distortions created by demand uncertainty, vertical separation, and downstream competition. A young literature in economics has begun to show how vertical restraints can increase welfare and profits by increasing inventory holdings when the manufacturer is a monopolist, demand is uncertain, and retailers compete (and also by decreasing destructive competition in models with flexible prices). This work will examine models of royalty or revenue sharing contracts, which have recently become widely used in the video rental industry (and others), and argue that revenue sharing is more efficient and versatile than other vertical restraints.

本研究将研究当价格不一定清除市场时，总需求不确定性对零售和消费者服务市场的影响。不灵活的价格意味着潜在的缺货，因此，当存在购物成本时，消费者将根据价格和可用性（找到库存商品的概率）选择在哪里购物。虽然在经济模型中，可获得性往往被忽视，但它是各种零售和消费者服务行业的消费者和公司真正关心的问题。例如，经常做广告的公司有汽车经销商、录像带租赁连锁店、邮购供应商、百货公司和电器商店。这项工作最初将集中在回答两个问题，出现在模型的可用性（或服务率）的竞争。第一个问题是，当企业在可获得性方面进行竞争，但消费者无法观察到它们的产能或库存（因此也无法观察到可获得性）时，市场结构、价格和可获得性是如何确定的。本研究将回答这个问题，通过扩展现有的竞争模型时，可观察到考虑寡头垄断库存选择与不对称信息。使用博弈论模型，工作将询问如何确定价格和可用性时，消费者使用价格作为信号的可用性。在各种静态模型（对应于伯特兰和古诺时间）的工作将表明，公司收取高价格，赚取超竞争利润（即使在极限的市场结构成为任意竞争）。动态扩展，消费者学习随着时间的推移和公司获得声誉的高可用性。第二个问题是制造商-零售商合同，特别是特许权使用费或收入分享合同，如何纠正需求不确定性、垂直分离和下游竞争造成的扭曲。一个年轻的经济学文献已经开始表明，当制造商是垄断者，需求不确定，零售商竞争时，垂直约束如何通过增加库存来增加福利和利润（以及通过减少灵活价格模型中的破坏性竞争）。这项工作将研究模型的版税或收入共享合同，最近已成为广泛使用的视频租赁行业（和其他），并认为收入共享是更有效和更灵活的比其他垂直约束。