Studies on Price Mark-ups and Price Rigidity

该研究项目涵盖了与公司定价决策有关的广泛问题，特别是价格加价和价格调整的决定因素。理论研究主要围绕三个问题展开。首先，建立并分析了完全信息下的限价定价模型，发现即使在完全信息下，如果快速扩容以促进大幅降价是有代价的，也可能出现限价。第二个方面的理论研究是合谋定价及其对反倾销法的影响。通过建立模型，分析了反倾销法对自实施合谋的形成及其定价的影响。研究的第三个方面是价格刚性。我们专注于价格刚性，这是由于对耐用产品生产商预先承诺长期价格的激励而产生的。我们发现，预先承诺的激励程度取决于消费的跨期替代程度。在实证方面，研究集中在定价政策的三个方面及其与企业行为的其他方面的相互作用。我们首先利用不同的数据集，获得了几种对日本主要公司和行业加价的替代估计。我们发现，对于大多数公司和行业来说，这些估计值明显高于统一值。然后我们研究了这些加价的决定因素，特别是监管政策变量的影响，我们还调查了不同加价对技术进步估计的影响。我们发现，忽略假设边际成本定价(当它不是边际成本定价时)所产生的估计向下偏差是很重要的。最后，我们还考察了价格-成本边际对价格-成本边际的影响。日本新成立企业的生存概率。

The research project encompasses wide range of issues related to pricing decisions of firms, determinants of price mark-ups and price adjustments, in particular. Theoretical research focused upon three major issues. First of all, the research builds and analyzes a model of limit pricing under complete information, We find that limit pricing can emerge even under complete information if rapid capacity expansion to facilitate large price cut is costly. Second aspect of the theoretical research is collusive pricing and the impact of anti-dumping laws. We build the model to analyze impacts of antidumping law on the formation of self-enforcing collusion and their pricing. Third aspect of the research is price rigidity. We focus upon price rigidity arising from the incentive to pre-commit long-run price for durable good producers. We show the incentive to pre-commit depends critically upon the degree of inter-temporal substitution in consumption.On empirical side, the research focuses upon three aspects of pricing policy and its interactions with other aspects of firm behavior. We first obtained several alternative estimates of mark-ups of major Japanese firms and industries, drawing upon different data sets. We find that for most of firms and industries, these estimates are significantly above unity. We then examined determinants of these mark-ups, focusing especially upon impacts of regulatory policy variables, We also investigated the consequences' of varying mark-ups on the estimate of technical progress. We find that ignoring the downward bias of the estimate created by assuming marginal cost pricing (when it is not) is substantial. Finally, we also investigated the impact of price-cost margin on the. survival probability of newly established firms in Japan.