IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lau/crdeep/15.04.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Home Bias in Multimarket Cournot Games

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Roux
  • Luís Santos-Pinto
  • Christian Thöni

Abstract

We explore the role played by trade costs for the home bias in trade. In a series of Cournot duopoly experiments with a home and an export market, we compare output choices when firms face different levels of export costs. We find that there is two-way trade in identical products and that firms hold the majority market share in their home market. The resulting home bias turns out to be, however, stronger than that predicted by theory, and it even occurs without trade costs. We have strong evidence that collusion contributes to the home bias observed in our experiment.

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Roux & Luís Santos-Pinto & Christian Thöni, 2015. "Home Bias in Multimarket Cournot Games," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 15.04, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    • Handle: RePEc:lau:crdeep:15.04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hec.unil.ch/deep/textes/15.04.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roux, Catherine & Thöni, Christian, 2015. "Collusion among many firms: The disciplinary power of targeted punishment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 83-93.
    2. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Linda L. Tesar, 2009. "Border Effect or Country Effect? Seattle May Not Be So Far from Vancouver After All," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 219-241, January.
    3. Brander, James & Krugman, Paul, 1983. "A 'reciprocal dumping' model of international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3-4), pages 313-321, November.
    4. Combes, Pierre-Philippe & Lafourcade, Miren & Mayer, Thierry, 2005. "The trade-creating effects of business and social networks: evidence from France," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 1-29, May.
    5. Maurice Obstfeld & Kenneth Rogoff, 2001. "The Six Major Puzzles in International Macroeconomics: Is There a Common Cause?," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15, pages 339-412, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Aker, Jenny C. & Klein, Michael W. & O'Connell, Stephen A. & Yang, Muzhe, 2014. "Borders, ethnicity and trade," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 1-16.
    7. Byford, Martin C. & Gans, Joshua S., 2014. "Collusion at the extensive margin," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 75-83.
    8. Noussair, Charles & Plott, Charles & Riezman, Raymond, 2007. "Production, trade, prices, exchange rates and equilibration in large experimental economies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 49-76, January.
    9. Constantin Colonescu & Nicolas Schmitt, 2003. "Market Segmentation, Market Integration, and Tacit Collusion," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 175-192, February.
    10. Lucy F. Ackert & Bryan K. Church & James Tompkins & Ping Zhang, 2005. "What's in a Name? An Experimental Examination of Investment Behavior," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 9(2), pages 281-304.
    11. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    12. Charles N. Noussair & Charles R. Plott & Raymond G. Riezman, 2013. "An Experimental Investigation of the Patterns of International Trade," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 17, pages 299-328, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Engel, Charles & Rogers, John H, 1996. "How Wide Is the Border?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1112-1125, December.
    14. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2003. "Gravity with Gravitas: A Solution to the Border Puzzle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 170-192, March.
    15. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    16. 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.
    17. Andreoni, James A & Miller, John H, 1993. "Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Experimental Evidence," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(418), pages 570-585, May.
    18. Ben S. Bernanke & Kenneth Rogoff, 2001. "Editorial in "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15"," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15, pages 1-4, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Hillberry, Russell & Hummels, David, 2008. "Trade responses to geographic frictions: A decomposition using micro-data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(3), pages 527-550, April.
    20. Kei-Mu Yi, 2010. "Can Multistage Production Explain the Home Bias in Trade?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 364-393, March.
    21. Paul Johnson, 2010. "Targeted Teaching - An International Economics Classroom Experiment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 77(2), pages 501-513, October.
    22. Noussair, C.N. & Plott, C. & Riezman, R., 2007. "Production, trade and exchange rates in large experimental economies," Other publications TiSEM 3bf683fe-0650-4e8a-8682-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    23. Brander, James A., 1981. "Intra-industry trade in identical commodities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 1-14, February.
    24. Eric W. Bond & Constantinos Syropoulos, 2008. "Trade costs and multimarket collusion," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 1080-1104, December.
    25. James E. Anderson & Douglas Marcouiller, 2002. "Insecurity And The Pattern Of Trade: An Empirical Investigation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 84(2), pages 342-352, May.
    26. Brülhart, Marius & Trionfetti, Federico, 2009. "A test of trade theories when expenditure is home biased," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(7), pages 830-845, October.
    27. McCallum, John, 1995. "National Borders Matter: Canada-U.S. Regional Trade Patterns," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 615-623, June.
    28. Parsley, David C. & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2001. "Explaining the border effect: the role of exchange rate variability, shipping costs, and geography," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 87-105, October.
    29. Christoph Engel, 2007. "How Much Collusion? A Meta-Analysis Of Oligopoly Experiments," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 491-549.
    30. Anderson, Michael A & Smith, Stephen L S, 1999. "Do National Borders Really Matter? Canada-US Regional Trade Reconsidered," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 219-227, May.
    31. Pio Baake & Hans-Theo Normann, 2002. "Collusive intra-industry trade in identical commodities," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 138(3), pages 482-492, September.
    32. Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Economics Working Paper Archive 531, The Johns Hopkins University,Department of Economics.
    33. B. Douglas Bernheim & Michael D. Whinston, 1990. "Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(1), pages 1-26, Spring.
    34. Ben S. Bernanke & Kenneth S. Rogoff (ed.), 2001. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262523140, April.
    35. Miguel Fonseca & Steffen Huck & Hans-Theo Normann, 2005. "Playing Cournot although they shouldn’t," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 25(3), pages 669-677, April.
    36. Davidson, Carl, 1984. "Cartel stability and tariff policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3-4), pages 219-237, November.
    37. Alberto Salvo, 2010. "Trade flows in a spatial oligopoly: gravity fits well, but what does it explain?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 63-96, February.
    38. Harrington, Joseph E., 2006. "How Do Cartels Operate?," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(1), pages 1-105, August.
    39. Krishna, Kala, 1989. "Trade restrictions as facilitating practices," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 251-270, May.
    40. John Duffy, 2014. "Macroeconomics in the Laboratory," Research in Experimental Economics, in: Experiments in Macroeconomics, volume 17, pages 1-10, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    41. Julio J. Rotemberg & Garth Saloner, 1989. "Tariffs vs Quotas with Implicit Collusion," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 22(2), pages 237-244, May.
    42. Hinloopen,Jeroen (ed.), 2009. "Experiments and Competition Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521493420, September.
    43. Bock, Olaf & Baetge, Ingmar & Nicklisch, Andreas, 2014. "hroot: Hamburg Registration and Organization Online Tool," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 117-120.
    44. 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.
    45. Fung, K C, 1992. "Economic Integration as Competitive Discipline," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(4), pages 837-847, November.
    46. Hans-Theo Normann & Brian Wallace, 2012. "The impact of the termination rule on cooperation in a prisoner’s dilemma experiment," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 41(3), pages 707-718, August.
    47. Mason, Charles F & Phillips, Owen R & Nowell, Clifford, 1992. "Duopoly Behavior in Asymmetric Markets: An Experimental Evaluation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(4), pages 662-670, November.
    48. repec:bla:reviec:v:9:y:2001:i:2:p:343-55 is not listed on IDEAS
    49. Engelmann, Dirk & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2007. "An experimental test of strategic trade policy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 144-156, September.
    50. Ben S. Bernanke & Kenneth Rogoff, 2001. "NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2000, Volume 15," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number bern01-1.
    51. 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.
    52. Carolyn L. Evans, 2003. "The Economic Significance of National Border Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1291-1312, September.
    53. Holger C. Wolf, 2000. "Intranational Home Bias In Trade," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 555-563, November.
    54. James E. Rauch, 2001. "Business and Social Networks in International Trade," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1177-1203, December.
    55. Trefler, Daniel, 1995. "The Case of the Missing Trade and Other Mysteries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1029-1046, December.
    56. Pinto, Brian, 1986. "Repeated games and the reciprocal dumping model of trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3-4), pages 357-366, May.
    57. 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.
    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. Andreas Freitag & Catherine Roux & Christian Thöni, 2021. "Communication And Market Sharing: An Experiment On The Exchange Of Soft And Hard Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 175-198, February.
    2. Hintermann, Beat & Ludwig, Markus, 2023. "Home country bias in international emissions trading: Evidence from the EU ETS," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    3. Benedikt Herz & Xosé-Luís Varela-Irimia, 2020. "Border effects in European public procurement [Information costs and home bias: an analysis of US holdings of foreign equities]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(6), pages 1359-1405.

    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. Kei-Mu Yi, 2010. "Can Multistage Production Explain the Home Bias in Trade?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 364-393, March.
    2. Patricia Sourdin & Richard Pomfret, 2012. "Trade Facilitation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14596.
    3. Andreas Freitag & Catherine Roux & Christian Thöni, 2021. "Communication And Market Sharing: An Experiment On The Exchange Of Soft And Hard Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 62(1), pages 175-198, February.
    4. Hintermann, Beat & Ludwig, Markus, 2023. "Home country bias in international emissions trading: Evidence from the EU ETS," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    5. A. Kerem Cosar & Paul L. E. Grieco & Felix Tintelnot, 2015. "Borders, Geography, and Oligopoly: Evidence from the Wind Turbine Industry," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(3), pages 623-637, July.
    6. Bhattacharjea, Aditya & Sinha, Uday Bhanu, 2015. "Multi-market collusion with territorial allocation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 42-50.
    7. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    8. Balaguer, Jacint & Ripollés, Jordi, 2018. "Disentangling the importance of international border effects. Some evidence from Portugal–Spain based on diesel retailers," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 260-269.
    9. Carlos Llano‐Verduras & Asier Minondo & Francisco Requena‐Silvente, 2011. "Is the Border Effect an Artefact of Geographical Aggregation?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(10), pages 1771-1787, October.
    10. Magerman, Glenn & Studnicka, Zuzanna & Van Hove, Jan, 2016. "Distance and border effects in international trade: A comparison of estimation methods," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 10, pages 1-31.
    11. Agnosteva, Delina E. & Anderson, James E. & Yotov, Yoto V., 2019. "Intra-national trade costs: Assaying regional frictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 32-50.
    12. Nuria Gallego & Carlos Llano, 2014. "The Border Effect and the Nonlinear Relationship between Trade and Distance," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(5), pages 1016-1048, November.
    13. Cletus C. Coughlin & Dennis Novy, 2013. "Is the International Border Effect Larger than the Domestic Border Effect? Evidence from US Trade," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 59(2), pages 249-276, June.
    14. Thi Mai Phuong, Chu & Tu, Thuy Anh, 2014. "On the border effect in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)," Papers 910, World Trade Institute.
    15. Whalley, John & Xin, Xian, 2009. "Home and regional biases and border effects in Armington type models," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 309-319, March.
    16. Bailey, Michael & Gupta, Abhinav & Hillenbrand, Sebastian & Kuchler, Theresa & Richmond, Robert & Stroebel, Johannes, 2021. "International trade and social connectedness," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    17. Delina Agnosteva & Constantinos Syropoulos & Yoto V. Yotov, 2017. "Multimarket Linkages, Cartel Discipline and Trade Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 6829, CESifo.
    18. Zhiqi Chen & Horatiu A. Rus & Anindya Sen, 2016. "Border Effects Before and After 9/11: Panel Data Evidence Across Industries," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(10), pages 1456-1481, October.
    19. Kei-Mu Yi, 2005. "Vertical specialization and the border effect puzzle," Working Papers 05-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    20. Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova, 2017. "Do Borders Really Slash Trade? A Meta-Analysis," IMF Economic Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Monetary Fund, vol. 65(2), pages 365-396, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intra-Industry Trade; Spatial Oligopoly; Home Bias; Collusion; Experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    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:lau:crdeep:15.04. 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: Christina Seld (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deelsch.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.