IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/jbvela/v5y2010i1n3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Experimental Examination of Market Concentration and Capacity Effects on Price Competition

Author

Listed:
  • Ewing Bradley T.

    (Texas Tech University)

  • Kruse Jamie B

    (East Carolina University and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration)

Abstract

This research examines the comparative impact of market concentration and excess capacity on the performance of posted-offer experimental markets. We report the results of panel data analysis of 35 markets with or without excess capacity involving two, three, or four sellers. We find that sellers can sustain higher prices in more concentrated laboratory markets. Higher levels of excess capacity lead to lower laboratory market prices supporting the notion that excess capacity reduces the ability of firms to collude as opposed to the view that excess capacity is a trigger strategy punishment that sustains collusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Ewing Bradley T. & Kruse Jamie B, 2010. "An Experimental Examination of Market Concentration and Capacity Effects on Price Competition," Journal of Business Valuation and Economic Loss Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 5(1), pages 1-16, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:jbvela:v:5:y:2010:i:1:n:3
    DOI: 10.2202/1932-9156.1093
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.2202/1932-9156.1093
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2202/1932-9156.1093?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Dufwenberg, Martin & Gneezy, Uri, 2000. "Price competition and market concentration: an experimental study," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 7-22, January.
    2. Jean-Pierre Benoit & Vijay Krishna, 1987. "Dynamic Duopoly: Prices and Quantities," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(1), pages 23-35.
    3. Huck, Steffen & Normann, Hans-Theo & Oechssler, Jorg, 2004. "Two are few and four are many: number effects in experimental oligopolies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 435-446, April.
    4. Davidson, Carl & Deneckere, Raymond J, 1990. "Excess Capacity and Collusion," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 31(3), pages 521-541, August.
    5. William A. Brock & José A. Scheinkman, 1985. "Price Setting Supergames with Capacity Constraints," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(3), pages 371-382.
    6. Douglas D. Davis & Charles A. Holt, 1992. "Introduction to Experimental Economics," Introductory Chapters, in: Experimental Economics, Princeton University Press.
    7. Brown-Kruse, Jamie, et al, 1994. "Bertrand-Edgeworth Competition in Experimental Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 343-372, March.
    8. Holt, Charles A, 1985. "An Experimental Test of the Consistent-Conjectures Hypothesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 314-325, June.
    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. Jan Potters & Sigrid Suetens, 2013. "Oligopoly Experiments In The Current Millennium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 439-460, July.

    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. Switgard Feuerstein, 2005. "Collusion in Industrial Economics—A Survey," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 5(3), pages 163-198, December.
    2. Vital Anderhub & Werner Güth & Ulrich Kamecke & Hans-Theo Normann, 2003. "Capacity Choices and Price Competition in Experimental Markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 6(1), pages 27-52, June.
    3. Huck, Steffen & Normann, Hans-Theo & Oechssler, Jorg, 2004. "Two are few and four are many: number effects in experimental oligopolies," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 435-446, April.
    4. Raymond J. Deneckere & Dan Kovenock, 1992. "Price Leadership," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 143-162.
      • Raymond Deneckere & Dan Kovenock, 1988. "Price Leadership," Discussion Papers 773, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    5. Kyle Hampton & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2012. "Demand shocks, capacity coordination, and industry performance: lessons from an economic laboratory," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 139-166, March.
    6. Cary Deck & Erik O Kimbrough & Steeve Mongrain, 2014. "Paying for Express Checkout: Competition and Price Discrimination in Multi-Server Queuing Systems," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-13, March.
    7. Pedro Dal Bó, 2007. "Tacit collusion under interest rate fluctuations," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 38(2), pages 533-540, June.
    8. Puzzello, Daniela, 2008. "Tie-breaking rules and divisibility in experimental duopoly markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 164-179, July.
    9. Abbink, Klaus & Brandts, Jordi, 2008. "24. Pricing in Bertrand competition with increasing marginal costs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 1-31, May.
    10. Baldelli, Serena & Lambertini, Luca, 2006. "Price vs quantity in a duopoly supergame with Nash punishments," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 121-130, September.
    11. Knittel, Christopher R. & Lepore, Jason J., 2010. "Tacit collusion in the presence of cyclical demand and endogenous capacity levels," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 131-144, March.
    12. Leufkens, Kasper & Peeters, Ronald, 2011. "Price dynamics and collusion under short-run price commitments," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 134-153, January.
    13. Axel Sonntag & Daniel John Zizzo, 2015. "Institutional authority and collusion," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 82(1), pages 13-37, July.
    14. Bayona, Anna & Brandts, Jordi & Vives, Xavier, 2020. "Information frictions and market power: A laboratory study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 354-369.
    15. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts, 2005. "Price Competition Under Cost Uncertainty: A Laboratory Analysis," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(3), pages 636-648, July.
    16. Daniel Cracau & Benjamin Franz, 2012. "An experimental study of mixed strategy equilibria in simultaneous price-quantity games," FEMM Working Papers 120017, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management.
    17. Bergman, Mats A., 1998. "Endogenous Timing of Investments Yields Modified Stackelberg Outcomes," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 272, Stockholm School of Economics.
    18. Harstad, Bård & Lancia, Francesco & Russo, Alessia, 2022. "Prices vs. quantities for self-enforcing agreements," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    19. Farm, Ante, 2009. "Market Sharing and Price Leadership," Working Paper Series 3/2009, Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
    20. Compte, Olivier & Jenny, Frederic & Rey, Patrick, 2002. "Capacity constraints, mergers and collusion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-29, January.

    More about this item

    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:bpj:jbvela:v:5:y:2010:i:1:n:3. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.