Studies on Price Mark-ups and Price Rigidity

该研究项目包括与公司的定价决定、特别是加价和价格调整的决定因素有关的广泛问题。理论研究主要集中在三个方面。首先，本文建立并分析了完全信息条件下的限价模型，发现在完全信息条件下，如果快速扩张产能以实现大幅度降价是有成本的，也会出现限价。理论研究的第二个方面是合谋定价及其对反倾销法律的影响。通过建立模型，分析了反倾销法对自执行性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。我们关注的是由于对耐用品生产商预先承诺长期价格的激励而产生的价格刚性。我们表明，提前承诺的动机关键取决于消费的跨期替代程度。在实证方面，研究集中于定价政策的三个方面及其与企业行为其他方面的相互作用。我们首先利用不同的数据集，获得了对日本主要公司和行业加价的几种不同估计。我们发现，对于大多数公司和行业，这些估计明显高于统一。然后，我们研究了这些加价的决定因素，特别关注监管政策变量的影响，我们还研究了不同加价对技术进步估计的后果。我们发现，忽略由假设边际成本定价（当它不是）而产生的估计的向下偏差是实质性的。最后，我们还研究了价格成本利润率对企业利润的影响。日本新成立公司的生存概率。

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.