Demand Uncertainty, Market Structure, and Competition in Availability

本研究将研究总需求不确定性对零售和消费者服务市场的影响，当价格不一定是明确的市场。不灵活的价格意味着潜在的缺货，因此，当有购物成本时，消费者将根据价格和可用性（找到库存商品的概率）来选择购物地点。虽然可得性在经济模型中经常被忽略，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，定期发布可用性广告的公司有汽车经销商、录像带租赁连锁店、邮购供应商、百货商店和家电商店。这项工作最初将集中于回答在可用性（或服务费率）竞争模型中出现的两个问题。第一个问题是，当企业在可用性上竞争，但他们的产能或库存（因此可用性）对消费者来说是不可观察的时，市场结构、价格和可用性是如何确定的。本研究将通过扩展现有的竞争模型来回答这个问题，当可用性是可观察的，以考虑非对称信息的寡头垄断库存选择。使用博弈论模型，这项工作将询问当消费者使用价格作为可用性的信号时，价格和可用性是如何确定的。在各种静态模型（对应于Bertrand和Cournot时序）中，该研究将表明，企业收取高价并获得超竞争性利润（即使是在市场结构变得任意竞争的极限情况下）。提出了动态扩展，其中消费者随着时间的推移而学习，公司因高可用性而获得声誉。第二个问题是，制造商和零售商之间的合同，特别是特许权使用费或收入分成合同，如何纠正需求不确定性、垂直分离和下游竞争造成的扭曲。一篇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，纵向限制是如何通过增加库存来增加福利和利润的（在价格灵活的模式下，纵向限制也可以通过减少破坏性竞争来增加福利和利润）。本文将研究最近在视频租赁行业（以及其他行业）广泛使用的版税或收入分成合同模型，并论证收入分成比其他垂直限制更有效、更通用。

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.