IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/enp/wpaper/eprg1929.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does competition increase pass-through?

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Ritz

    (EPRG, CJBS, University of Cambridge)

Abstract

In recent years, the literature has seen a surge of interest in pass‐through as an economic tool. At the same time, widespread concerns have emerged about the rising market power of firms. How does competition affect pass‐through? A standard intuition is that more competition makes prices more cost‐reflective and hence raises the rate of cost pass‐through. This article shows this conclusion is sensitive to the routine assumption that firms' marginal costs are constant. With modestly convex costs, market power can raise pass‐through (even when it lies below 1). These results have implications for antitrust policy, environmental regulation, and welfare analysis.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Ritz, 2019. "Does competition increase pass-through?," Working Papers EPRG1929, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg1929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/eprg-wp1929.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anderson, Simon P. & Renault, Regis, 2003. "Efficiency and surplus bounds in Cournot competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 253-264, December.
    2. Monika Mrázová & J. Peter Neary, 2017. "Not So Demanding: Demand Structure and Firm Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3835-3874, December.
    3. FRANK VERBOVEN & THEON van DIJK, 2009. "Cartel Damages Claims And The Passing‐On Defense," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 457-491, September.
    4. Kimball, Miles S, 1995. "The Quantitative Analytics of the Basic Neomonetarist Model," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 27(4), pages 1241-1277, November.
    5. Mark Bagnoli & Ted Bergstrom, 2006. "Log-concave probability and its applications," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Charalambos D. Aliprantis & Rosa L. Matzkin & Daniel L. McFadden & James C. Moore & Nicholas C. Yann (ed.), Rationality and Equilibrium, pages 217-241, Springer.
    6. E. Glen Weyl & Michal Fabinger, 2013. "Pass-Through as an Economic Tool: Principles of Incidence under Imperfect Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(3), pages 528-583.
    7. Hart, Oliver, 1995. "Firms, Contracts, and Financial Structure," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198288817.
    8. Cabral, Luis M. B., 1995. "Conjectural variations as a reduced form," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 397-402, October.
    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. Chi Kong Chyong & David Reiner & Dhruvak Aggarwal, 2021. "Market power and long-term gas contracts: the case of Gazprom in Central and Eastern European Gas Markets," Working Papers EPRG2115, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    2. Bustos, Emil, 2023. "The Effect of Centrally Bargained Wages on Firm Growth," Working Paper Series 1456, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    3. Adachi, Takanori, 2020. "Hong and Li meet Weyl and Fabinger: Modeling vertical structure by the conduct parameter approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).

    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. Robert A. Ritz, 2018. "Oligopolistic competition and welfare," Chapters, in: Luis C. Corchón & Marco A. Marini (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory and Industrial Organization, Volume I, chapter 7, pages 181-200, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Monika Mrázová & J. Peter Neary, 2017. "Not So Demanding: Demand Structure and Firm Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3835-3874, December.
    3. Kiminori Matsuyama & Philip Ushchev, 2022. "Selection and Sorting of Heterogeneous Firms through Competitive Pressures," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1189, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    4. Cédric Duprez & Glenn Magerman, 2019. "Price Updating with Production Networks," Working Papers ECARES 2019-07, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Dagoumas, Athanasios S. & Polemis, Michael L., 2020. "Carbon pass-through in the electricity sector: An econometric analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    6. Li, Yumin, 2018. "Incentive pass-through in the California Solar Initiative – An analysis based on third-party contracts," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 534-541.
    7. Schweizer, Nikolaus & Szech, Nora, 2015. "A quantitative version of Myerson regularity," Working Paper Series in Economics 76, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    8. Malik Curuk & Suphi Sen, 2023. "Climate Policy and Resource Extraction with Variable Markups and Imperfect Substitutes," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 1091-1120.
    9. Rhodes, Andrew & Watanabe, Makoto & Zhou, Jidong, 2017. "Multiproduct Intermediaries and Optimal Product Range," MPRA Paper 82136, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Neurohr, Bertram, 2018. "A merger approach to cartel overcharge analysis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 28-30.
    11. Adachi, Takanori, 2020. "Hong and Li meet Weyl and Fabinger: Modeling vertical structure by the conduct parameter approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    12. Cole, Matthew T. & Eckel, Carsten, 2018. "Tariffs and markups in retailing," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 139-153.
    13. Parenti, Mathieu & Ushchev, Philip & Thisse, Jacques-François, 2017. "Toward a theory of monopolistic competition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 86-115.
    14. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2023. "The proper scope of government reconsidered: Asymmetric information and incentive contracts," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    15. E. Glen Weyl & Michal Fabinger, 2013. "Pass-Through as an Economic Tool: Principles of Incidence under Imperfect Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(3), pages 528-583.
    16. Badis Tabarki, 2020. "International Trade under Monopolistic Competition beyond the CES," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 20018, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    17. Kristian Behrens & Giordano Mion & Yasusada Murata & Jens Suedekum, 2020. "Quantifying the Gap Between Equilibrium and Optimum under Monopolistic Competition," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 2299-2360.
    18. Dagoumas, Athanasios & Polemis, Michael, 2018. "Analysing Carbon Pass-Through Rate Mechanism in the Electricity Sector: Evidence from Greece," MPRA Paper 91067, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Mrázová, Monika & Neary, J. Peter, 2020. "IO for exports(s)," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    20. Badis Tabarki, 2020. "International Trade under Monopolistic Competition beyond the CES," Post-Print halshs-02966937, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cost pass-through; imperfect competition; perfect competition; production technology;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D41 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Perfect Competition
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:enp:wpaper:eprg1929. 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: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/jicamuk.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.