IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/23034.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction

Author

Listed:
  • Ulrich Doraszelski
  • Katja Seim
  • Michael Sinkinson
  • Peichun Wang

Abstract

We explore the implications of ownership concentration for the recently-concluded incentive auction that re-purposed spectrum from broadcast TV to mobile broadband usage in the U.S. We document significant multi-license ownership of TV stations. We show that in the reverse auction, in which TV stations bid to relinquish their licenses, multi-license owners have an incentive to withhold some TV stations to drive up prices for their remaining TV stations. Using a large-scale valuation exercise, we find that this strategic supply reduction conservatively increases payouts to TV stations by between 7.0% and 20.7%.

Suggested Citation

  • Ulrich Doraszelski & Katja Seim & Michael Sinkinson & Peichun Wang, 2017. "Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction," NBER Working Papers 23034, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23034
    Note: IO
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w23034.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Oyer, 1998. "Fiscal Year Ends and Nonlinear Incentive Contracts: The Effect on Business Seasonality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 149-185.
    2. Dominic Coey & Bradley Larsen & Kane Sweeney, 2019. "The bidder exclusion effect," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 50(1), pages 93-120, March.
    3. Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "What Happens When You Tax the Rich? Evidence from Executive Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 352-378, April.
    4. Robert J. Weber, 1997. "Making More from Less: Strategic Demand Reduction in the FCC Spectrum Auctions," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(3), pages 529-548, September.
    5. David Lucking-Reiley & John A. List, 2000. "Demand Reduction in Multiunit Auctions: Evidence from a Sportscard Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 961-972, September.
    6. Frank Riedel & Elmar Wolfstetter, 2006. "Immediate demand reduction in simultaneous ascending-bid auctions: a uniqueness result," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 29(3), pages 721-726, November.
    7. Kagel, John H & Levin, Dan, 2001. "Behavior in Multi-unit Demand Auctions: Experiments with Uniform Price and Dynamic Vickrey Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(2), pages 413-454, March.
    8. Mark Duggan & Fiona M. Scott Morton, 2006. "The Distortionary Effects of Government Procurement: Evidence from Medicaid Prescription Drug Purchasing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(1), pages 1-30.
    9. Menezes, Flavio M., 1996. "Multiple-unit English auctions," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(4), pages 671-684, December.
    10. Robert Wilson, 1979. "Auctions of Shares," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 93(4), pages 675-689.
    11. Catherine D. Wolfram, 1998. "Strategic Bidding in a Multiunit Auction: An Empirical Analysis of Bids to Supply Electricity in England and Wales," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(4), pages 703-725, Winter.
    12. Timothy G. Conley & Francesco Decarolis, 2016. "Detecting Bidders Groups in Collusive Auctions," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 1-38, May.
    13. Back, Kerry & Zender, Jaime F, 1993. "Auctions of Divisible Goods: On the Rationale for the Treasury Experiment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(4), pages 733-764.
    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. Felipe Arteaga & Adam J Kapor & Christopher A Neilson & Seth D Zimmerman, 2022. "Smart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(3), pages 1791-1848.
    2. Deng, Shanglyu, 2023. "Speculation in procurement auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    3. Mo Xiao & Zhe Yuan, 2022. "License Complementarity and Package Bidding: US Spectrum Auctions," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 420-464, November.
    4. Evan Kwerel & Paroma Sanyal & Katja Seim & Martha Stancill & Patrick Sun, 2017. "Economics at the FCC, 2016–2017: Auction Designs for Spectrum Repurposing and Universal Service Subsidies," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 51(4), pages 451-486, December.
    5. Steven Berry & Martin Gaynor & Fiona Scott Morton, 2019. "Do Increasing Markups Matter? Lessons from Empirical Industrial Organization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 44-68, Summer.
    6. Christopher Neilson & Felipe Arteaga & Adam Kapor & Seth Zimmerman, 2021. "Smart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School ChoiceSmart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School Choice," Working Papers 650, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..

    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. Doraszelski, Ulrich & , & Sinkinson, Michael & Wang, Peichun, 2016. "Ownership Concentration and Strategic Supply Reduction," CEPR Discussion Papers 11173, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Pagnozzi, Marco, 2009. "Resale and bundling in auctions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 667-678, November.
    3. Dirk Engelmann & Veronika Grimm, 2009. "Bidding Behaviour in Multi-Unit Auctions - An Experimental Investigation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 855-882, April.
    4. Atakelty Hailu & Sophie Thoyer, 2007. "Designing Multi‐unit Multiple Bid Auctions: An Agent‐based Computational Model of Uniform, Discriminatory and Generalised Vickrey Auctions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 83(s1), pages 57-72, September.
    5. Marco Pagnozzi, 2007. "Should Speculators Be Welcomed in Auctions?," CSEF Working Papers 176, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    6. Toshihiro Tsuchihashi, 2021. "A buyout option alleviates implicit collusion in uniform‐price auctions," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(5), pages 1146-1155, July.
    7. Marco Pagnozzi, 2010. "Are Speculators Unwelcome in Multi-object Auctions?," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 97-131, May.
    8. Manzano, Carolina & Vives, Xavier, 2021. "Market power and welfare in asymmetric divisible good auctions," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(3), July.
    9. Paul Klemperer, 2002. "What Really Matters in Auction Design," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 169-189, Winter.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General

    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:nbr:nberwo:23034. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.