IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/62302.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Stability in price competition revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Faias, Marta
  • Hervés-Estévez, Javier
  • Moreno-García, Emma

Abstract

We consider consumers with the same reservation price, who desire to buy at most one unit of a good. Firms compete only in prices but there are other features firms cannot control that would eventually lead an agent to buy in one firm or another. We introduce such uncertainty in a model of a price competition game with incomplete information. This competition takes place under stability and we provide equilibrium existence results. We analyze different specifications of residual demands which yield further interpretations that deepen the phenomenon of price dispersion, Bertrand’s paradox and market power.

Suggested Citation

  • Faias, Marta & Hervés-Estévez, Javier & Moreno-García, Emma, 2014. "Stability in price competition revisited," MPRA Paper 62302, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Aug 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:62302
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/62302/1/MPRA_paper_62302.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-659, September.
    2. Balder, Erik J., 2004. "An equilibrium existence result for games with incomplete information and indeterminate outcomes," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-4), pages 297-320, June.
    3. Paul R. Milgrom & Robert J. Weber, 1985. "Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 619-632, November.
    4. Edward H. Chamberlin, 1937. "Monopolistic or Imperfect Competition?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 51(4), pages 557-580.
    5. Steven Salop & Joseph Stiglitz, 1977. "Bargains and Ripoffs: A Model of Monopolistically Competitive Price Dispersion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 493-510.
    6. Spulber, Daniel F, 1995. "Bertrand Competition When Rivals' Costs Are Unknown," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 1-11, March.
    7. Erik J. Balder, 1988. "Generalized Equilibrium Results for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 265-276, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2004. "Price Dispersion In The Small And In The Large: Evidence From An Internet Price Comparison Site," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 463-496, December.
    2. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau & Richard McLean, 2014. "On the existence of Nash equilibrium in Bayesian games," Departmental Working Papers 201402, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    3. Michael R. Baye & J. Rupert J. Gatti & Paul Kattuman & John Morgan, 2009. "Clicks, Discontinuities, and Firm Demand Online," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(4), pages 935-975, December.
    4. Backus, Matthew R. & Podwol, Joseph Uri & Schneider, Henry S., 2014. "Search costs and equilibrium price dispersion in auction markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 173-192.
    5. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2004. "Temporal Price Dispersion: Evidence from an Online Consumer Electronics Market," Working Papers 2004-04, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    6. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2006. "Persistent Price Dispersion in Online Markets," Chapters, in: Dennis W. Jansen (ed.), The New Economy and Beyond, chapter 6, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    7. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899.
    8. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau & Richard P. McLean, 2018. "On the Existence of Nash Equilibrium in Bayesian Games," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 43(2), pages 100-129, February.
    9. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau, 2021. "Equilibria in infinite games of incomplete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(2), pages 311-360, June.
    10. Eric J. Hoffmann & Tarun Sabarwal, 2019. "Equilibrium existence in global games with general payoff structures," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(1), pages 105-115, May.
    11. Bester, Helmut & Petrakis, Emmanuel, 1995. "Price competition and advertising in oligopoly," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 1075-1088, June.
    12. Lin William Cong & Zhiguo He & Jiasun Li & Wei Jiang, 2021. "Decentralized Mining in Centralized Pools [Concentrating on the fall of the labor share]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(3), pages 1191-1235.
    13. Burdett, Ken & Smith, Eric, 2010. "Price distributions and competition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 106(3), pages 180-183, March.
    14. Katja Seim & Michael Sinkinson, 2016. "Mixed pricing in online marketplaces," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 129-155, June.
    15. Sugden, Robert & Wang, Mengjie & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2019. "Take it or leave it: Experimental evidence on the effect of time-limited offers on consumer behaviour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 1-23.
    16. Sengupta Anirban & Wiggins Steven N., 2012. "Comparing Price Dispersion on and off the Internet Using Airline Transaction Data," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-38, March.
    17. Maarten Janssen & Eric Rasmusen, 2002. "Bertrand Competition Under Uncertainty," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 11-21, March.
    18. Bajoori, Elnaz & Flesch, János & Vermeulen, Dries, 2016. "Behavioral perfect equilibrium in Bayesian games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 78-109.
    19. Gamp, Tobias & Krähmer, Daniel, 2022. "Biased Beliefs in Search Markets," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 365, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    20. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price competition; incomplete information; Nash equilibrium; ap- proximate equilibrium; price dispersion.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C70 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - General
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - General
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    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:pra:mprapa:62302. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.