IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmic/v5y2013i1p175-93.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Welfare Effects of Use-or-Lose Provisions in Markets with Dominant Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Ian Gale
  • Daniel P. O'Brien

Abstract

A use-or-lose provision requires that firms employ a certain minimum fraction of their productive capacity. Variants have been used by regulators in the airline and wireless communications industries, among others. A typical stated objective is to limit capacity hoarding, thereby increasing aggregate output and welfare. When the dominant firm is more efficient than fringe firms, we find that imposing a use-or- lose provision induces the dominant firm to acquire capacity from the fringe, which causes aggregate output to fall. When the dominant firm is less efficient than the fringe, aggregate output rises. In both cases, total surplus may rise or fall. (JEL D43, K21, L13, L93)

Suggested Citation

  • Ian Gale & Daniel P. O'Brien, 2013. "The Welfare Effects of Use-or-Lose Provisions in Markets with Dominant Firms," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 175-193, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:5:y:2013:i:1:p:175-93
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/mic.5.1.175
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/mic.5.1.175
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gale, Ian & O'Brien, Daniel P, 2001. "The Antitrust Implications of Capacity Reallocation by a Dominant Firm," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(2), pages 137-160, June.
    2. Riordan, Michael H, 1998. "Anticompetitive Vertical Integration by a Dominant Firm," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1232-1248, December.
    3. Krishna, Kala, 1993. "Auctions with Endogenous Valuations: The Persistence of Monopoly Revisited," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 147-160, March.
    4. Gale, Ian, 1994. "Price competition in noncooperative joint ventures," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 53-69, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Valdes, Victor & Gillen, David, 2018. "The consumer welfare effects of slot concentration and reallocation: A study of Mexico City International Airport," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 114(PA), pages 256-269.
    2. James Reitzes & Brendan McVeigh & Nicholas Powers & Samuel Moy, 2015. "Competitive Effects of Exchanges or Sales of Airport Landing Slots," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 46(2), pages 95-125, March.
    3. Antelo, Manel & Bru, Lluís, 2022. "Optimal capacity allocation in a vertical industry," MPRA Paper 113984, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Zenger, Hans, 2013. "Competition and collusion with fixed output," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(2), pages 259-261.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Péter Eső & Volker Nocke & Lucy White, 2010. "Competition for scarce resources," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(3), pages 524-548, September.
    2. Juan‐Pablo Montero & Juan Ignacio Guzman, 2010. "Output‐Expanding Collusion In The Presence Of A Competitive Fringe," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(1), pages 106-126, March.
    3. Zanchettin, Piercarlo & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2017. "Vertical integration and product differentiation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 25-57.
    4. Yongmin Chen & Chuan He, 2011. "Paid Placement: Advertising and Search on the Internet," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(556), pages 309-328, November.
    5. Yongmin Chen & Ruqu Wang, 2006. "Market Design with Correlated Valuations," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 73(292), pages 659-672, November.
    6. Martin Gaynor & Deborah Haas-Wilson, 1999. "Change, Consolidation, and Competition in Health Care Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 141-164, Winter.
    7. Benoit Voudon, 2019. "Vertical Integration in the presence of a Cost-Reducing Technology," Trinity Economics Papers tep0919, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    8. Gaynor, Martin & Vogt, William B., 2000. "Antitrust and competition in health care markets," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 27, pages 1405-1487, Elsevier.
    9. James Lake & Maia Linask, 2015. "Costly distribution and the non-equivalence of tariffs and quotas," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 211-238, December.
    10. Awi Federgruen & Ming Hu, 2016. "Technical Note—Sequential Multiproduct Price Competition in Supply Chain Networks," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 135-149, February.
    11. Hackner, Jonas, 2003. "Vertical Integration and Competition Policy," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 213-222, September.
    12. Jay Pil Choi & Sang-Seung Yi, 2000. "Vertical Foreclosure with the Choice of Input Specifications," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(4), pages 717-743, Winter.
    13. James D. Dana & Kathryn Spier, 2000. "Entry Deterrence in a Duopoly Model," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1451, Econometric Society.
    14. Gale, Ian L. & Stegeman, Mark, 2001. "Sequential Auctions of Endogenously Valued Objects," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 74-103, July.
    15. Peter L. Ormosi, 2009. "Determinants of the success of remedy offers: Evidence from European Community mergers," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2009-11, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    16. Hongjun Zhong, 2002. "postbid market interaction and auction choice," Microeconomics 0210002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Pitchik, Carolyn, 2009. "Budget-constrained sequential auctions with incomplete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 928-949, July.
    18. Yongmin Chen & Michael H. Riordan, 2007. "Vertical integration, exclusive dealing, and expost cartelization," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(1), pages 1-21, March.
    19. Shai Bernstein & Eyal Winter, 2012. "Contracting with Heterogeneous Externalities," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 50-76, May.
    20. Richard J. Gilbert & Michael H. Riordan, 2007. "Product Improvement And Technological Tying In A Winner‐Take‐All Market," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(1), pages 113-139, March.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L93 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Air Transportation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:5:y:2013:i:1:p:175-93. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.