IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/twi/respas/0062.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition within firms

Author

Listed:
  • Lisa Bruttel
  • Simeon Schudy

Abstract

We investigate the role of incentives set by a parent firm for competition among its subsidiaries. In a Cournot experiment four subsidiaries of the same parent operate in the same market. Parents earn a specific share of the joint profit and can choose how to distribute the remaining surplus (or loss). Results show that parents allocating profits equally among their subsidiaries reach outcomes close to collusion. However, almost half of the parent firms employ a proportional sharing rule instead. These groups end up with profits around the Cournot level.

Suggested Citation

  • Lisa Bruttel & Simeon Schudy, 2010. "Competition within firms," TWI Research Paper Series 62, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    • Handle: RePEc:twi:respas:0062
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.twi-kreuzlingen.ch/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/twi-rps-062-bruttel-schudy-2010-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pedro Rey‐Biel, 2008. "Inequity Aversion and Team Incentives," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(2), pages 297-320, June.
    2. Gary Bornstein & Uri Gneezy, 2002. "Price Competition Between Teams," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 5(1), pages 29-38, June.
    3. Ola Andersson & Erik Wengström, 2007. "Do Antitrust Laws Facilitate Collusion? Experimental Evidence on Costly Communication in Duopolies," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(2), pages 321-339, June.
    4. Raab, Philippe & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2009. "Cournot competition between teams: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 691-702, November.
    5. Huck, Steffen & Muller, Wieland & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2004. "Strategic delegation in experimental markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 561-574, April.
    6. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    7. Bornstein, Gary & Kugler, Tamar & Budescu, David V. & Selten, Reinhard, 2008. "Repeated price competition between individuals and between teams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(3-4), pages 808-821, June.
    8. 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.
    9. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    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. Müller, Wieland & Tan, Fangfang, 2013. "Who acts more like a game theorist? Group and individual play in a sequential market game and the effect of the time horizon," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 658-674.
    2. Jan Potters & Sigrid Suetens, 2013. "Oligopoly Experiments In The Current Millennium," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 439-460, July.
    3. Raab, Philippe & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2009. "Cournot competition between teams: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 691-702, November.
    4. Müller, Wieland & Tan, Fangfang, 2013. "Who acts more like a game theorist? Group and individual play in a sequential market game and the effect of the time horizon," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 658-674.
    5. Hildenbrand, Andreas, 2013. "Is a firm a firm? A Stackelberg experiment," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 7, pages 1-26.
    6. Kurschilgen, Michael & Morell, Alexander & Weisel, Ori, 2017. "Internal conflict, market uniformity, and transparency in price competition between teams," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 121-132.
    7. Raab, Philippe & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2009. "Cournot competition between teams: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 691-702, November.
    8. Han, Johann & Kairies-Schwarz, Nadja & Vomhof, Markus, 2016. "Quality competition and hospital mergers: An experiment," Ruhr Economic Papers 609, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    9. Han, Johann & Kairies-Schwarz, Nadja & Vomhof, Markus, 2020. "Quality provision in competitive health care markets: Individuals vs. teams," Ruhr Economic Papers 839, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    10. Johann Han & Nadja Kairies-Schwarz & Markus Vomhof, 2024. "Strategic behaviour and decision making in competitive hospital markets: an experimental investigation," International Journal of Health Economics and Management, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 333-355, September.
    11. Huck, Steffen & Lünser, Gabriele & Spitzer, Florian & Tyran, Jean-Robert, 2016. "Medical insurance and free choice of physician shape patient overtreatment: A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PB), pages 78-105.
    12. Florian Heine & Martin Sefton, 2018. "To Tender or Not to Tender? Deliberate and Exogenous Sunk Costs in a Public Good Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-28, June.
    13. Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Crede, Carsten J., 2020. "Post-cartel tacit collusion: Determinants, consequences, and prevention," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    14. 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.
    15. Argenton, Cédric & Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta & Müller, Wieland, 2024. "Cournot meets Bayes-Nash: A discontinuity in behavior in finitely repeated duopoly games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 1-12.
    16. Catherine Roux & Christian Thöni, 2015. "Do control questions influence behavior in experiments?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(2), pages 185-194, June.
    17. Rau, Holger & Clemens, Georg, 2014. "Do Leniency Policies facilitate Collusion? Experimental Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100509, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Daniele Nosenzo & Simone Quercia & Martin Sefton, 2015. "Cooperation in small groups: the effect of group size," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(1), pages 4-14, March.
    19. 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.
    20. Björn Bartling & Urs Fischbacher, 2012. "Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 67-87.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cournot Competition; Subsidiary; Subcompany; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • K21 - Law and Economics - - Regulation and Business Law - - - Antitrust Law
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure

    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:twi:respas:0062. 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: Urs Fischbacher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/twikrch.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.