IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mag/wpaper/07004.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Inefficient Intra-Firm Incentives Can Stabilize Cartels in Cournot Oligopolies

Author

Listed:
  • Roland Kirstein

    (Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg)

  • Annette Kirstein

Abstract

The instability of Cournot cartels can be overcome by a collective wage agreement if this agreement stipulates minimum fixed wages and piece rates that are legally enforceable. This new view on the institution of collective wage agreements is not only relevant for strategic management, it also has an important implication for economic policy: competition authorities should observe such agreements for their potentially collusive effect on product markets. Moreover, the model contributes to the explanation of the “fixed wage puzzle”, i.e., the observation that firms pay lower than efficient variable wages and higher fixed wages than predicted by contract theory.

Suggested Citation

  • Roland Kirstein & Annette Kirstein, 2007. "Inefficient Intra-Firm Incentives Can Stabilize Cartels in Cournot Oligopolies," FEMM Working Papers 07004, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    • Handle: RePEc:mag:wpaper:07004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ww.uni-magdeburg.de/fwwdeka/femm/a2007_Dateien/2007_04.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2007
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Bornstein & Uri Gneezy, 2002. "Price Competition Between Teams," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 5(1), pages 29-38, June.
    2. Nalebuff, Barry J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1983. "Information, Competition, and Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(2), pages 278-283, May.
    3. Amable, Bruno & Gatti, Donatella, 2002. "Macroeconomic effects of product market competition in a dynamic efficiency wage model," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 39-46, March.
    4. Benjamin E. Hermalin, 1992. "The Effects of Competition on Executive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(3), pages 350-365, Autumn.
    5. Reitman, David, 1993. "Stock Options and the Strategic Use of Managerial Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 513-524, June.
    6. Fee, C Edward & Hadlock, Charles J, 2000. "Management Turnover and Product Market Competition: Empirical Evidence from the U.S. Newspaper Industry," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(2), pages 205-243, April.
    7. Michael Raith, 2003. "Competition, Risk, and Managerial Incentives," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1425-1436, September.
    8. Bensaid, Bernard & Gary-Bobo, Robert J., 1991. "Negotiation of profit-sharing contracts in industry," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 1069-1085, July.
    9. Oriana Bandiera, 2003. "Land Reform, the Market for Protection, and the Origins of the Sicilian Mafia: Theory and Evidence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 218-244, April.
    10. Rajesh K. Aggarwal & Andrew A. Samwick, 1999. "Executive Compensation, Strategic Competition, and Relative Performance Evaluation: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 1999-2043, December.
    11. Klaus M. Schmidt, 1997. "Managerial Incentives and Product Market Competition," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 64(2), pages 191-213.
    12. Glazer, Jacob & Israel, Ronen, 1990. "Managerial incentives and financial signaling in product market competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 271-280, June.
    13. Kuhn, Kai-Uwe, 1994. "Labour Contracts, Product Market Oligopoly, and Involuntary Unemployment," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 366-384, July.
    14. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    15. McDonald, Ian M & Solow, Robert M, 1981. "Wage Bargaining and Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 896-908, December.
    16. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    17. Haucap, Justus & Pauly, Uwe & Wey, Christian, 2001. "Collective wage setting when wages are generally binding An antitrust perspective," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 287-307, September.
    18. Hart, R. A., 1990. "Profit sharing and work sharing," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 11-14, September.
    19. Oliver D. Hart, 1983. "The Market Mechanism as an Incentive Scheme," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 366-382, Autumn.
    20. Steven D. Sklivas, 1987. "The Strategic Choice of Managerial Incentives," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(3), pages 452-458, Autumn.
    21. Nickell, Stephen J, 1996. "Competition and Corporate Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(4), pages 724-746, August.
    22. Weitzman, Martin L, 1985. "The Simple Macroeconomics of Profit Sharing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(5), pages 937-953, December.
    23. Stewart, Geoff, 1989. "Profit-sharing in cournot oligopoly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 221-224, December.
    24. Maria Paz Espinosa & Changyong Rhee, 1989. "Efficient Wage Bargaining as a Repeated Game," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(3), pages 565-588.
    25. Gal-Or, Esther, 1995. "Correlated Contracts in Oligopoly," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 36(1), pages 75-100, February.
    26. Arne Nygaard & Ingunn Myrtveit, 2000. "Moral hazard, competition and contract design: empirical evidence from managerial, franchised and entrepreneurial businesses in Norway," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(3), pages 349-356.
    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. Jerger, Jürgen & Michaelis, Jochen, 2011. "The fixed wage puzzle: Why profit sharing is so hard to implement," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 104-106, February.
    2. Bornstein, Gary & Kugler, Tamar & Budescu, David V. & Selten, Reinhard, 2008. "Repeated price competition between individuals and between teams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(3-4), pages 808-821, June.
    3. Max Albert & Andreas Hildenbrand, 2016. "Industrial Organization and Experimental Economics: How to Learn from Laboratory Experiments," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 135-156, August.

    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. Alejandro Robinson Cortés, 2013. "Eficiencia Interna y Competencia de Mercado en Oligopolio," Undergraduate theses (Spanish) tesl001, CIDE, División de Economía.
    2. Karuna, Christo, 2007. "Industry product market competition and managerial incentives," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2-3), pages 275-297, July.
    3. Stefan Beiner & Markus M. Schmid & Gabrielle Wanzenried, 2011. "Product Market Competition, Managerial Incentives and Firm Valuation," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 17(2), pages 331-366, March.
    4. Ahmed Ennasri, 2010. "Incitations Managériales et Concurrence : Synthèse de la Littérature," Studies and Syntheses 10-03, LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier, revised Oct 2010.
    5. Vicente Cuñat & Maria Guadalupe, 2005. "How Does Product Market Competition Shape Incentive Contracts?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(5), pages 1058-1082, September.
    6. Dam, Kaniṣka & Robinson-Cortés, Alejandro, 2020. "Executive compensation and competitive pressure in the product market: How does firm entry shape managerial incentives?," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 60-77.
    7. Michaelides, Panayotis G. & Tsionas, Efthymios G. & Konstantakis, Konstantinos N. & Xidonas, Panos, 2019. "The impact of market competition on CEO salary in the US energy sector1," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 32-37.
    8. Tang, Yuehua, 2018. "When does competition mitigate agency problems?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 258-274.
    9. Evangelia Chalioti, 2015. "Incentive contracts under product market competition and R&D spillovers," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 58(2), pages 305-328, February.
    10. Marcello D'Amato & Riccardo Martina & Salvatore Piccolo, 2005. "Competitive Pressure, Incentives and Managerial Rewards," CSEF Working Papers 148, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 01 Jul 2006.
    11. Goergen, Marc & Manjon, Miguel C. & Renneboog, Luc, 2008. "Recent developments in German corporate governance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 175-193, September.
    12. Ormazabal, Gaizka, 2018. "The Role of Stakeholders in Corporate Governance: A View from Accounting Research," CEPR Discussion Papers 12775, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Waisman, Maya, 2013. "Product market competition and the cost of bank loans: Evidence from state antitakeover laws," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 4721-4737.
    14. Nickell, Stephen, 1999. "Product markets and labour markets1," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 1-20, March.
    15. Vicente Cuñat & Maria Guadalupe, 2009. "Globalization and the Provision of Incentives inside the Firm: The Effect of Foreign Competition," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(2), pages 179-212, April.
    16. Ugur, Mehmet & Solomon, Edna & Zeynalov, Ayaz, 2022. "Leverage, competition and financial distress hazard: Implications for capital structure in the presence of agency costs," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    17. Vidhi Chhaochharia & Yaniv Grinstein & Gustavo Grullon & Roni Michaely, 2017. "Product Market Competition and Internal Governance: Evidence from the Sarbanes–Oxley Act," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1405-1424, May.
    18. Ennasri, Ahmed & Willinger, Marc, 2014. "Incentives and managerial effort under competitive pressure: An experiment," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 324-337.
    19. Patrick Legros & Andrew F. Newman, 2014. "Contracts, Ownership, and Industrial Organization: Past and Future," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 30(suppl_1), pages 82-117.
    20. Esther Gal‐Or, 1997. "Multiprincipal Agency Relationships as Implied by Product Market Competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 235-256, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Piece rate; fixed wage; collective wage agreements;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • J33 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Compensation Packages; Payment Methods
    • J50 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - General
    • K31 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Labor Law
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    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:mag:wpaper:07004. 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: Guido Henkel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fwmagde.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.