IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tin/wpaper/20110015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Capacity Constraints and Beliefs about Demand

Author

Listed:
  • Nick Vikander

    (Erasmus University Rotterdam, and University of Edinburgh)

Abstract

This paper examines how a firm can strategically choose its capacity to manipulate consumer beliefs about aggregate demand. It looks at a market with social effects where consumers want to do what is popular, to buy what they believe others want to buy. By imposing a capacity constraint and setting a price just low enough for it to bind, the firm can fool certain naive consumers into believing that demand is greater than it actually is. This will in turn increase the willingness to pay of all consumers through social effects. In equilibrium, the firm will impose a capacity constraint whenever demand is lower than expected, even when the number of naive consumers is arbitrarily small.

Suggested Citation

  • Nick Vikander, 2011. "Capacity Constraints and Beliefs about Demand," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-015/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:tin:wpaper:20110015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://papers.tinbergen.nl/11015.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Social Interactions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(6), pages 1063-1093, Nov.-Dec..
    2. Basu, Kaushik, 1987. "Monopoly, quality uncertainty and 'status' goods," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 435-446.
    3. Jehiel, Philippe, 2005. "Analogy-based expectation equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 81-104, August.
    4. Chioveanu, Ioana & Zhou, Jidong, 2009. "Price Competition and Consumer Confusion," MPRA Paper 17340, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Becker, Gary S, 1991. "A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influences on Price," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 1109-1116, October.
    6. Jehiel, Philippe & Koessler, Frédéric, 2008. "Revisiting games of incomplete information with analogy-based expectations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 533-557, March.
    7. DeSerpa, Allan C & Faith, Roger L, 1996. ""Bru-u-u-uce": The Simple Economics of Mob Goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 89(1-2), pages 77-91, October.
    8. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    9. Xavier Gabaix & David Laibson, 2018. "Shrouded attributes, consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets," Chapters, in: Victor J. Tremblay & Elizabeth Schroeder & Carol Horton Tremblay (ed.), Handbook of Behavioral Industrial Organization, chapter 3, pages 40-74, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Patrick DeGraba, 1995. "Buying Frenzies and Seller-Induced Excess Demand," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(2), pages 331-342, Summer.
    11. Katz, Michael L & Shapiro, Carl, 1985. "Network Externalities, Competition, and Compatibility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(3), pages 424-440, June.
    12. ,, 2006. "Competition over agents with boundedly rational expectations," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(2), pages 207-231, June.
    13. H. Leibenstein, 1950. "Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers' Demand," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 64(2), pages 183-207.
    14. Ignacio Esponda, 2008. "Behavioral Equilibrium in Economies with Adverse Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1269-1291, September.
    15. Karni, Edi & Levin, Dan, 1994. "Social Attributes and Strategic Equilibrium: A Restaurant Pricing Game," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(4), pages 822-840, August.
    16. Volker Nocke & Martin Peitz, 2007. "A Theory of Clearance Sales," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(522), pages 964-990, July.
    17. Holt, Charles A & Sherman, Roger, 1994. "The Loser's Curse," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 642-652, June.
    18. Vincenzo Denicolo' & Paolo Garella, 1999. "Rationing in a Durable Goods Monopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(1), pages 44-55, Spring.
    19. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    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. Vikander Nick, 2019. "Sellouts, Beliefs, and Bandwagon Behavior," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(1), pages 1-21, January.
    2. Henk Folmer & Auke Leen, 2013. "Why do successful restaurants not raise their prices?," Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences, Springer, vol. 6(2), pages 81-90, July.
    3. Philippe Jehiel, 2022. "Analogy-Based Expectation Equilibrium and Related Concepts:Theory, Applications, and Beyond," PSE Working Papers halshs-03735680, HAL.
    4. David Ettinger & Philippe Jehiel, 2004. "Towards a Theory of Deception," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000247, UCLA Department of Economics.
    5. Kaushik Basu, 2016. "Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9299.
    6. Oz Shy, 2011. "A Short Survey of Network Economics," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 38(2), pages 119-149, March.
    7. Ran Spiegler, 2019. "Behavioral Economics and the Atheoretical Style," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 173-194, May.
    8. Christoph March, 2011. "Adaptive social learning," PSE Working Papers halshs-00572528, HAL.
    9. Goldbaum, David, 2021. "The origins of influence," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 380-396.
    10. W. F. Lawless & Margo Bergman & J. Louçã & Nicole N. Kriegel & Nick Feltovich, 2007. "A quantum metric of organizational performance: Terrorism and counterterrorism," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 241-281, September.
    11. Andreas Blume & April Mitchell Franco & Paul Heidhues, 2021. "Dynamic coordination via organizational routines," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(4), pages 1001-1047, November.
    12. Engström, Per & Forsell, Eskil, 2018. "Demand effects of consumers’ stated and revealed preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 43-61.
    13. Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 1999. "Segmented communication and fashionable behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 371-385, July.
    14. Drew Fudenberg, 2006. "Advancing Beyond Advances in Behavioral Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 694-711, September.
    15. Necati Tereyağoğlu & Peter S. Fader & Senthil Veeraraghavan, 2018. "Multiattribute Loss Aversion and Reference Dependence: Evidence from the Performing Arts Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(1), pages 421-436, January.
    16. Antonio Guarino & Philippe Jehiel, 2013. "Social Learning with Coarse Inference," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 147-174, February.
    17. Angela A. Hung & Charles R. Plott, 2001. "Information Cascades: Replication and an Extension to Majority Rule and Conformity-Rewarding Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1508-1520, December.
    18. Xinxin Li & Lorin M. Hitt, 2008. "Self-Selection and Information Role of Online Product Reviews," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 456-474, December.
    19. Dunia López-Pintado & Duncan J. Watts, 2008. "Social Influence, Binary Decisions and Collective Dynamics," Rationality and Society, , vol. 20(4), pages 399-443, November.
    20. Toker Doganoglu, 2003. "Dynamic Price Competition with Consumption Externalities," Netnomics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 43-69, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    capacity constraints; bandwagon effects; naive consumers; bounded rationality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • L00 - Industrial Organization - - General - - - 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:tin:wpaper:20110015. 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: Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tinbenl.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.