IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4848.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Industry Structure and Pricing over the Business Cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Yossi Spiegel
  • Konrad O. Stahl

Abstract

We consider the interaction between an incumbent firm and a potential entrant, and examine how this interaction is affected by demand fluctuations. Our model gives rise to procyclical entry, prices, and price-cost margins, although the average price in the market can be countercyclical if the entrant is a first mover, and capacity utilization can be either pro- or countercyclical if the incumbent is a first mover. Moreover, our results show that entry deterrence by the incumbent firm can either amplify or dampen the effect of demand fluctuations on prices, price-cost margins, and capacity utilization.

Suggested Citation

  • Yossi Spiegel & Konrad O. Stahl, 2014. "Industry Structure and Pricing over the Business Cycle," CESifo Working Paper Series 4848, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4848
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4848.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marzio Galeotti & Fabio Schiantarelli, 1998. "The Cyclicality of Markups in a Model with Adjustment Costs: Econometric Evidence for US Industry," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 60(2), pages 121-142, May.
    2. Paul Klemperer, 1995. "Competition when Consumers have Switching Costs: An Overview with Applications to Industrial Organization, Macroeconomics, and International Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(4), pages 515-539.
    3. Kyle Bagwell & Robert Staiger, 1997. "Collusion Over the Business Cycle," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(1), pages 82-106, Spring.
    4. Jeffrey Campbell, 1998. "Entry, Exit, Embodied Technology, and Business Cycles," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 1(2), pages 371-408, April.
    5. Robert W. Staiger & Frank A. Wolak, 1992. "Collusive Pricing with Capacity Constraints in the Presence of Demand Uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(2), pages 203-220, Summer.
    6. Julio J. Rotemberg & Michael Woodford, 1991. "Markups and the Business Cycle," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 1991, Volume 6, pages 63-140, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Elizabeth J. Warner & Robert B. Barsky, 1995. "The Timing and Magnitude of Retail Store Markdowns: Evidence from Weekends and Holidays," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 321-352.
    8. Mark Bils, 1989. "Pricing in a Customer Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(4), pages 699-718.
    9. Judith R. Gelman & Steven C. Salop, 1983. "Judo Economics: Capacity Limitation and Coupon Competition," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 315-325, Autumn.
    10. Chevalier, Judith A & Scharfstein, David S, 1996. "Capital-Market Imperfections and Countercyclical Markups: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 703-725, September.
    11. Machin, Stephen & Van Reenen, John, 1993. "Profit Margins and the Business Cycle: Evidence from UK Manufacturing Firms," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 29-50, March.
    12. J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    13. Bart J. Wilson & Stanley S. Reynolds, 2005. "Market Power And Price Movements Over The Business Cycle," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 145-174, June.
    14. James M. MacDonald, 2000. "Demand, Information, and Competition: Why Do Food Prices Fall at Seasonal Demand Peaks?," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 27-45, March.
    15. Domowitz, Ian & Hubbard, R Glenn & Petersen, Bruce C, 1987. "Oligopoly Supergames: Some Empirical Evidence on Prices and Margins," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 379-398, June.
    16. Edmond, Chris & Veldkamp, Laura, 2009. "Income dispersion and counter-cyclical markups," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(6), pages 791-804, September.
    17. Franck Portier, 1995. "Business Formation and Cyclical Markups in the French Business Cycle," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 37-38, pages 411-440.
    18. Rosenbaum, David I. & Sukharomana, Supachat, 2001. "Oligopolistic pricing over the deterministic market demand cycle: some evidence from the US Portland cement industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 863-884, May.
    19. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2006. "Information, Search, and Price Dispersion," Working Papers 2006-11, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    20. Christopher J. Nekarda & Valerie A. Ramey, 2020. "The Cyclical Behavior of the Price‐Cost Markup," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(S2), pages 319-353, December.
    21. Fabra, Natalia, 2006. "Collusion with capacity constraints over the business cycle," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 69-81, January.
    22. Compte, Olivier & Jenny, Frederic & Rey, Patrick, 2002. "Capacity constraints, mergers and collusion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 1-29, January.
    23. repec:bla:econom:v:58:y:1991:i:231:p:317-23 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Judith A. Chevalier & Anil K. Kashyap & Peter E. Rossi, 2003. "Why Don't Prices Rise During Periods of Peak Demand? Evidence from Scanner Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 15-37, March.
    25. Marco Cornia & Kristopher S. Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2012. "Price Dispersion Over the Business Cycle: Evidence from the Airline Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 347-373, September.
    26. Kristopher S. Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2009. "Does Competition Reduce Price Dispersion? New Evidence from the Airline Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(1), pages 1-37, February.
    27. Rotemberg, Julio J. & Woodford, Michael, 1999. "The cyclical behavior of prices and costs," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 16, pages 1051-1135, Elsevier.
    28. repec:adr:anecst:y:1995:i:37-38:p:17 is not listed on IDEAS
    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. Jael, Paul, 2014. "Full cost, profit et concurrence [Full cost, Profit and Competition]," MPRA Paper 64406, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Lambertini, Luca & Marattin, Luigi, 2021. "On prices’ cyclical behaviour in oligopolistic markets," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 79-86.
    3. Jael, Paul, 2020. "A Rational Theory of Producer’s Equilibrium in Fifteen Principles," MPRA Paper 99456, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Bernhard Dachs & Martin Hud & Christian Köhler & Bettina Peters, 2016. "Employment Effects of Innovations over the Business Cycle: Firm-Level Evidence from European Countries," DEM Discussion Paper Series 16-20, Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg.
    5. Jael, Paul, 2014. "Full Cost, Profit and Competition," MPRA Paper 59630, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Spiegel, Yossi & Stahl, Konrad, 2014. "Industry structure and pricing over the business cycle," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-039, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    2. Stahl, Konrad & Spiegel, Yossi, 2014. "Industry structure and pricing over the business cycle," CEPR Discussion Papers 10009, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Plehn-Dujowich, Jose M., 2008. "On the counter-cyclicality of prices and markups in a Cournot model of entry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 310-313, May.
    4. Dou, Winston Wei & Ji, Yan & Wu, Wei, 2021. "Competition, profitability, and discount rates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 582-620.
    5. Konopczak, Karolina, 2019. "Modelling cyclical variation in the cost pass-through: evidence from regime-dependent ARDL model," MF Working Papers 36, Ministry of Finance in Poland.
    6. Marco Cornia & Kristopher S. Gerardi & Adam Hale Shapiro, 2012. "Price Dispersion Over the Business Cycle: Evidence from the Airline Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(3), pages 347-373, September.
    7. Sungki Hong, 2017. "Customer Capital, Markup Cyclicality, and Amplification," Working Papers 2017-33, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
    8. Sungki Hong, 2019. "Customer Capital, Markup Cyclicality, and Amplification," 2019 Meeting Papers 959, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    9. Carmen García & Joan Ramon Borrell & José Manuel Ordóñez-de-Haro & Juan Luis Jiménez, 2022. "Managers’ expectations, business cycles and cartels’ life cycle," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 53(3), pages 451-484, June.
    10. Dan Bernhardt & Mahdi Rastad, 2016. "Collusion Under Risk Aversion and Fixed Costs," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(4), pages 808-834, December.
    11. Johannes Stroebel & Joseph Vavra, 2019. "House Prices, Local Demand, and Retail Prices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1391-1436.
    12. Asplund, Marcus & Eriksson, Rickard & Strand, Niklas, 2001. "Prices, Margins and Liquidity Constraints: Swedish Newspapers 1990-1996," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 470, Stockholm School of Economics.
    13. Salman Ahmad & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "Analysing the Price Cost Markup and Its Behaviour over the Business Cycles in Case of Manufacturing Industries of Pakistan," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:117, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    14. Andrea Vaona, 2016. "A nonparametric panel data approach to the cyclical dynamics of price-cost margins in the fourth Kondratieff wave," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 6(2), pages 155-170, August.
    15. Magnus Lundin & Nils Gottfries & Charlotte Bucht & Tomas Lindström, 2009. "Price and Investment Dynamics: Theory and Plant‐Level Data," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(5), pages 907-934, August.
    16. Lambertini, Luca & Marattin, Luigi, 2021. "On prices’ cyclical behaviour in oligopolistic markets," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 79-86.
    17. Etienne Gagnon & David López-Salido, 2020. "Small Price Responses to Large Demand Shocks," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 792-828.
    18. Robert E. Hall, 2012. "The Cyclical Response of Advertising Refutes Counter-Cyclical Profit Margins in Favor of Product-Market Frictions," NBER Working Papers 18370, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Luigi Paciello & Andrea Pozzi & Nicholas Trachter, 2019. "Price Dynamics With Customer Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 60(1), pages 413-446, February.
    20. Jaimovich, Nir, 2007. "Firm dynamics and markup variations: Implications for sunspot equilibria and endogenous economic fluctuations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 300-325, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    price competition; business cycle; entry; entry deterrence;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • L41 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies - - - Monopolization; Horizontal Anticompetitive Practices

    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:ces:ceswps:_4848. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.