IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_5560.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Advance-Purchase Financing of Projects with Few Buyers

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Sahm

Abstract

I investigate a simple model of advance-purchase contracts as a mode of financing costly projects. An entrepreneur has to meet some capital requirement in order to start production and sell the related good to a limited number of potential buyers who are privately informed about their willingness to pay. I find that advance-purchase arrangements enable more costly projects to be financed than traditional funding sources. The entrepreneur uses advance-purchase sur-charges as a price discrimination device. However, the discriminatory power is limited by the problem of free-riding, which is exacerbated as the number of potential buyers increases.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Sahm, 2015. "Advance-Purchase Financing of Projects with Few Buyers," CESifo Working Paper Series 5560, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_5560
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp5560.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brito, Dagobert L & Oakland, William H, 1980. "On the Monopolistic Provision of Excludable Public Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 691-704, September.
    2. Gale, Ian L & Holmes, Thomas J, 1993. "Advance-Purchase Discounts and Monopoly Allocation of Capacity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 135-146, March.
    3. Peter Norman, 2004. "Efficient Mechanisms for Public Goods with Use Exclusions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(4), pages 1163-1188.
    4. Nocke, Volker & Peitz, Martin & Rosar, Frank, 2011. "Advance-purchase discounts as a price discrimination device," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 141-162, January.
    5. Schmitz, Patrick W, 1997. "Monopolistic Provision of Excludable Public Goods under Private Information," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 52(1), pages 89-101.
    6. Ernst R. Berndt & Rachel Glennerster & Michael R. Kremer & Jean Lee & Ruth Levine & Georg Weizsäcker & Heidi Williams, 2007. "Advance market commitments for vaccines against neglected diseases: estimating costs and effectiveness," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(5), pages 491-511, May.
    7. Cornelli, Francesca, 1996. "Optimal Selling Procedures with Fixed Costs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 1-30, October.
    8. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2010. "Advance Purchase Discounts Versus Clearance Sales," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(547), pages 1125-1148, September.
    9. Gale, Ian L. & Holmes, Thomas J., 1992. "The efficiency of advance-purchase discounts in the presence of aggregate demand uncertainty," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 413-437, September.
    10. Ellman, Matthew & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2019. "Optimal crowdfunding design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    11. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    12. James D. Dana Jr., 1998. "Advance-Purchase Discounts and Price Discrimination in Competitive Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(2), pages 395-422, April.
    13. Dana, James D, Jr, 2001. "Monopoly Price Dispersion under Demand Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 42(3), pages 649-670, August.
    14. James D. Dana Jr., 1999. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion Under Demand Uncertainty: The Roles of Costly Capacity and Market Structure," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 632-660, Winter.
    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. Ellman, Matthew & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2019. "Optimal crowdfunding design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    2. Praveen Kumar & Nisan Langberg & David Zvilichovsky, 2020. "Crowdfunding, Financing Constraints, and Real Effects," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(8), pages 3561-3580, 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. Marco Sahm, 2020. "Advance-Purchase Financing of Projects with Few Buyers," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 57(4), pages 909-933, December.
    2. Sahm, Marco, 2015. "Advance-Purchase Financing of Projects with Few Buyers," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113122, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Ellman, Matthew & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2019. "Optimal crowdfunding design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    4. Yannis Kerkemezos & Bas Karreman, 2020. "On the Benefits of Being Alone: Scheduling Changes, Intensity of Competition and Dynamic Airline Pricing," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-042/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    5. BELLEFLAMME, Paul & LAMBERT, Thomas & SCHWIENBACHER, Armin, 2011. "Crowdfunding: tapping the right crowd," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2011032, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    6. Seongman Moon & Makoto Watanabe, 2011. "Refundability and Price: Empirical Analysis on the Airline Industry," Working Papers 1107, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).
    7. Nocke, Volker & Peitz, Martin & Rosar, Frank, 2011. "Advance-purchase discounts as a price discrimination device," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 141-162, January.
    8. Angela Stefania Bergantino & Claudia Capozza, 2015. "Airline Pricing Behavior Under Limited Inter‐Modal Competition," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 700-713, January.
    9. Bilotkach, Volodymyr & Gaggero, Alberto A. & Piga, Claudio A., 2015. "Airline pricing under different market conditions: Evidence from European Low-Cost Carriers," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 152-163.
    10. Siegert, Caspar & Ulbricht, Robert, 2020. "Dynamic oligopoly pricing: Evidence from the airline industry," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    11. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2016. "Competition in the presence of individual demand uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(2), pages 273-292, May.
    12. Alderighi, Marco & Gaggero, Alberto A. & Piga, Claudio A., 2022. "Hidden prices with fixed inventory: Evidence from the airline industry," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 42-61.
    13. Yongmin Chen & Tianle Zhang, 2015. "Interpersonal Bundling," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(6), pages 1456-1471, June.
    14. Akan, Mustafa & Ata, Barış & Dana, James D., 2015. "Revenue management by sequential screening," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 728-774.
    15. Zhang, Tianle, 2010. "Advance-Purchase Programs: When to Introduce and What to Inform Consumers," MPRA Paper 25606, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. X. Wang & Chenhang Zeng, 2016. "A model of advance selling with consumer heterogeneity and limited capacity," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 117(2), pages 137-165, March.
    17. Herbst, Holger, 2015. "Pricing Heterogeneous Goods under Ex Post Private Information," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 01/2015, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    18. Yucheng Ding & Tianle Zhang, 2022. "Advance selling programs: When to introduce and what to inform consumers," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(3), pages 779-790, April.
    19. Sahm, Marco, 2016. "Advance-purchase financing of projects with few buyers," BERG Working Paper Series 118, Bamberg University, Bamberg Economic Research Group.
    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

    pre-ordering; price discrimination; excludable public goods; monopolistic provision; crowdfunding; innovation and R&D;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
    • L26 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Entrepreneurship
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

    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:_5560. 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.