Psychological and experimental evidence, as well as a wealth of anecdotal examples, suggests that firms may confound fixed, sunk and variable costs, leading to distorted pricing decisions. This paper investigates the extent to which market forces and learning eventually eliminate these distortions. We envision firms that experiment with cost methodologies that are consistent with real-world accounting practices, including ones that confuse the relevance of variable, fixed, and sunk costs to pricing decisions. Firms follow "naive" adaptive learning to adjust prices and reinforcement learning to modify their costing methodologies. Costing and pricing practices that increase profits are reinforced. In some market structures, but not in others, this process of reinforcement causes pricing practices of all firms to systematically depart from standard equilibrium predictions.

In this paper we describe the pass-through behavior of a major U.S. supermarket chain for 78 products across 11 categories. Our data set includes retail prices and wholesale prices for stores in 15 retail price zones for a one-year period. For the empirical model, we use a reduced-form approach that focuses directly on equilibrium prices as a function of exogenous supply- and demand-shifting variables. The reduced-form approach enables us to identify the theoretical pass-through rate without specific assumptions about the form of consumer demand or the conduct of a category-pricing manager. Thus, our measurements of pass-through are not constrained by specific structure on the underlying economic model. The empirical pricing model includes costs of all competing products in the category on the right-hand side (not only the cost of the focal brand) and yields estimates of both own-brand and cross-brand pass-through rates. Our results provide a rich picture of the retailer's pass-through behavior. We find that pass-through varies substantially across products and across categories. Own-brand pass-through rates are, on average, more than 60% for 9 of 11 categories, a finding that is at odds with the claims of manufacturers about retailers in general. Importantly, we find substantial evidence of cross-brand pass-through effects, indicating that retail prices of competing products are adjusted in response to a change in the wholesale price of any given product in the category. We find that cross-brand pass-through rates are both positive and negative. We explore determinants of own-brand and cross-brand pass-through rates and find strong evidence in multiple categories of asymmetric retailer response to trade promotions on large versus small brands. For example, brands with larger market shares, and brands that contribute more to retailer profits in the category, receive higher pass-through. We also find that trade promotions on large brands are less likely than small brands to generate positive cross-brand pass-through, i.e., induce the retailer to reduce the retail price of competing smaller products. On the other hand, small share brands are disadvantaged along three dimensions. Trade promotions on small brands receive low own-brand pass-through and generate positive cross-brand pass-through for larger competing brands. Moreover, small share brands do not receive positive cross pass-through from trade promotions on these larger competitors. We also find that store brands are similarly disadvantaged with respect to national brands.

In this paper we describe the pass-through behavior of a major U.S. supermarket chain for 78 products across 11 categories. Our data set includes retail prices and wholesale prices for stores in 15 retail price zones for a one-year period. For the empirical model, we use a reduced-form approach that focuses directly on equilibrium prices as a function of exogenous supply- and demand-shifting variables. The reduced-form approach enables us to identify the theoretical pass-through rate without specific assumptions about the form of consumer demand or the conduct of a category-pricing manager. Thus, our measurements of pass-through are not constrained by specific structure on the underlying economic model. The empirical pricing model includes costs of all competing products in the category on the right-hand side (not only the cost of the focal brand) and yields estimates of both own-brand and cross-brand pass-through rates. Our results provide a rich picture of the retailer's pass-through behavior. We find that pass-through varies substantially across products and across categories. Own-brand pass-through rates are, on average, more than 60% for 9 of 11 categories, a finding that is at odds with the claims of manufacturers about retailers in general. Importantly, we find substantial evidence of cross-brand pass-through effects, indicating that retail prices of competing products are adjusted in response to a change in the wholesale price of any given product in the category. We find that cross-brand pass-through rates are both positive and negative. We explore determinants of own-brand and cross-brand pass-through rates and find strong evidence in multiple categories of asymmetric retailer response to trade promotions on large versus small brands. For example, brands with larger market shares, and brands that contribute more to retailer profits in the category, receive higher pass-through. We also find that trade promotions on large brands are less likely than small brands to generate positive cross-brand pass-through, i.e., induce the retailer to reduce the retail price of competing smaller products. On the other hand, small share brands are disadvantaged along three dimensions. Trade promotions on small brands receive low own-brand pass-through and generate positive cross-brand pass-through for larger competing brands. Moreover, small share brands do not receive positive cross pass-through from trade promotions on these larger competitors. We also find that store brands are similarly disadvantaged with respect to national brands.

Empirical evidence suggests that there are substantial and persistent differences in the sizes of firms in most industries. We propose a dynamic model of capacity accumulation that is consistent with the observed facts. The model highlights the mode of product market competition and the extent of investment reversibility as key determinants of the size distribution of firms in an industry. In particular, if firms compete in prices and the rate of depreciation is large, then the industry moves toward an outcome with one dominant firm and one small firm. Industry dynamics in this case resemble a preemption race. Contrary to the usual intuition, this preemption race becomes more brutal as investment becomes more reversible.

This paper provides an empirical investigation of how firms with cost advantages (cost disadvantages) exploit (cope with) their advantages (disadvantages) through their pricing behavior. Guided by microeconomic theory and insights from the industrial organization literature, we develop testable implications about the effect of industry structure and firm-specific characteristics on the pass-through elasticity: The rate at which changes in a firm's cost relative to competitors translates into changes in the firm's price relative to competitors. We test these implications using data from the PIMS Competitive Strategy database. The results indicate that a firm's pass-through elasticity systematically depends on whether the firm operates in a commodity or noncommodity industry, the firm's capacity utilization, and its cost and quality position in its industry. The pass-through elasticity is also shown to depend in a nonlinear way on market concentration.

This paper studies organizational structure and incentives within a company, Citibank, that has an explicit and evolving global business strategy. The paper focuses on Citibank's corporate banking business, which in the mid-1990's underwent major changes in its strategy that, in turn, were accompanied by two major reorganizations and implementations of a new incentive compensation system. Citibank's corporate banking business in OECD markets moved froma geography-based organization to one that was multi-dimensional, with the customer dimension given first priority, the product dimension given second priority, and the geography dimension significantly de-emphasized. Citibank thus represents an excellent setting for examining the interplay among strategy and organizational structure in a complex, global company.

This paper analyzes electric utility stock price reactions to events preceding the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992, a development that precipitated the onset of competition in the wholesale sector of the electric utility industry and accelerated the pace toward state-level deregulation of the retail sector. For the industry as a whole, we find that, at worst, investors had neutral reactions to events preceding wholesale deregulation. However, stock price reactions vary systematically with differences in incumbent utilities' marginal costs, though not with differences in fixed costs or purchased power costs. These results are consistent with the notino that new technologies have substantially reduced barriers to entry into the electric power generation industry, rendering capital cost advantages of incumbent utilities vulnerable to being neutralized by new entrants. However, marginal cost advantages are more likely to be sustainable because they are likely to be driven by inimitable locational advantages.

An informational alliance involves the consolidation of the private information of independent suppliers in anticipation of a contracting opportunity with a principal. An informational alliance is an intermediate form of organization between the consolidation of information as in a merger and the suppliers remining separate entities. It can Pareto dominate a merger, independent contracting, and hierarchical contracting, so a principal can benefit by allowing suppliers to organize the supply network. An informational alliance forms at the nexus of internally-verifiable private information. The principal's contracting problem then involves a participation condition with a reservation value that is a function of type.

Discrete choice models of demand have typically been estimated assuming that prices are exogenous. Since unobservable (to the researcher) product attributes, such as coupon availability, may impact consumer utility as well as price setting by firms, we treat prices as endogenous. Specifically, prices are assumed to be the equilibrium outcomes of Nash competition among manufacturers and retailers. To empirically validate the assumptions, we estimate logit demand systems jointly with equilibrium pricing equations for two product categories using retail scanner data and cost data on factor prices. In each category, we find statistical evidence of price endogeneity. We also find that the estimates of the price response parameter and the brand-specific constants are generally biased downward when the endogeneity of prices is ignored. Our framework provides explicit estimates of the value created by a brand, i.e., the difference between consumers' willingness to pay for a brand and its cost of production. We develop theoretical propositions about the relationship between value creations and competitive advantage for logit demand systems and use our empirical results to illustrate how firms use alternative value creation strategies to accomplish competitive advantage.

We show that in an imperfect information environment the equity value of an impaired bank may increase or decrease when it is required to meet a capital standard. Regardless of the change in the bank's equity value, however, its stock price will fall in response to a forced recapitalization, consistent with recent empirical evidence. Simulations of our model suggest that this stock price decline is likely to be larger the smaller is the share of ownership held by the managers of the bank, also consistent with recent empirical evidence in the literature. Our model further predicts a rise in bank's non-interest expenses following a required recapitalization. Given the increase in the regulator's exposure that would accompany a reduction in the bank's market value of equity, the regulator may choosenotto enforce the regulation. Hence, capital regulation may be time-inconsistent in this situation and consequently not have its intended risk-mitigating incentives.

We show that in an imperfect information environment the equity value of an impaired bank may increase or decrease when it is required to meet a capital standard. Regardless of the change in the bank's equity value, however, its stock price will fall in response to a forced recapitalization, consistent with recent empirical evidence. Simulations of our model suggest that this stock price decline is likely to be larger the smaller is the share of ownership held by the managers of the bank, also consistent with recent empirical evidence in the literature. Our model further predicts a ise in bank's non-interest expense following a required recapitalization. Given the increase in the regulator's exposure that would accompany a reduction in the bank's market value of equity, the regulator may choose not to enforce the regulation. Hence, capital regulation may be time-inconsistent in this situation and consequently not have its intended risk-mitigating incentives.

This paper analyzes exclusive dealing in a model with band differentiation by manufacturers and spatial differentiation by retailers. Exclusive dealing is shown to generate higher profits for manufacturers, who thus have an incentive to insist on exclusive dealing. Exclusive dealing also results in higher prices and higher transportation costs for consumers. However, exclusive dealing may still increase total surplus because it reduces the fixed costs of retailing. If so, the comparision with non-exclusive dealing becomes difficult because these lower fixed costs induce entry of additional retailers, reducing the retail margin and consumer's transportation costs. Numerical analysis suggests that total surplus is likely to increase with exclusive dealing when there are substantial reduction in the fixed costs of retailing.

Although the Guidelines should improve the predictability of the Agency's merger enforcement policy, it is not possible to remove the exercise of judgement from the evaluation of mergers under the antitrust laws. Because the specific standards set forth in the Guidelines must be applied to a broad range of possible factual circumstances, mechanical applicatoin of those standads may provide misleading answers to the economic questions raised under the antitrust laws. Moreover, information is often incomplete and the picture of competitive conditions that develops from historical evidence may provide an incomplete answer to the forward-looking inquiry of the Guidelines. Therefore, the Agency will apply the standards of the Guidelines reasonably and flexibly to the particular facts and circumstances of each proposed merger.

We conside the incentives for oligopolistic manfacturers to adopt exclusive dealing. Manufacturers producing differentiated brands can choose to distribute through exclusive retail dealerships or nonexclusive dealerships. With nonexclusive dealing, manufacturers face an interbrand externality because brand-enhancing investments made by one manufacturer may benefit the brands of other manufacturers. Although exclusive dealing eliminates this externality, oligopolistic manufacturers may not choose exclusive dealing. Exclusive dealing eliminates this externality, oligopolistic manfacturers may not choose exclusive dealing. Exclusive dealing enhances the incentive to invest, but the promotional investments are a form of competition between manufacturers. Thus, manufacturers might earn higher profits with nonexclusive dealing making lower promotional investments. We find cases in which nonexclusive dealing is a dominant strategy. We also find cases in which some, but not all, manufacturers adopt exclusive dealing. Moreover, even if adoption of exclusive dealing by all manufacturers is the equilibrium, it can arise from a prisoner's dilemna in that each manufacturer would prefer nonexclusive dealing.

This paper analyzes the economics of contemporaneous most-favored customer clauses (MFCC) in a non-cooperative n-firm oligopoly. In the first stage of a two-stage game, each firm indepedently decided whether to adopt MFCC; in the second stage, firms set prices non-cooperatively, given the first stage choices. In contrast to work on retroactive MFCC by Cooper [The RAND Journal of Economics (1986, 17, 37-388)], our analysis shows that not adopting MFCC can be a dominant strategy. The difference between our results and Cooper's highlights important differences between retroactive and contemporaneous MFCC and suggests that MFCC are a less powerful facilitating practice than retroactive MFCC. Our analysis also sheds new light on Grether and Plott's [Economic Inquiry (1984, 22, 497-507)] experimental results regarding the effects of MFCC on average industry prices.

We present an equilibrium analysis to predict the long-run allocational consequences and risk implications of banking deregulation. Loan demand and deposit supply functions are derived from primitive assumptions about the preferences of individuals, and banks are viewed as (differentiated) competitors in a spatial context. We find that a relaxation of entry barriers into banking improves the welfare of borrowers and savers at the expense of bank stockholders. Equilibrium loan interest rates fall and equilibrium deposit interest rates rise as banking becomes more competitive. Despite this, the equilibrium debt-equity ratios of banks increase as entry barriers are relaxed. We also examine the implications of capital standards and find that an increase in the minimum capital requirement benefits borrowers but hurts depositors.

This paper investigates how a designer of an organization (referred to as the regulator) should organize a production activity in which two different units produce components and where each unit has private information about its costs. Three organizational structures are analyzed. In the first (informational consolidation), the regulator contracts with a consolidated unit that produces both components. In the second (informational decentralization) the regulator independently contracts with the producer of each component. In the third (informational delegation), the regulator contracts with one of the units, which in turn subcontracts with the other. In each case, the regulator's optimal mechanism consisting of payment and output schedules is fully characterized. Informational consolidation and informational decentralization yield different output schedules. Under informational decentralization, the optimal output schedule may not depend on the sum of the marginal costs of each component, but when it does, the regulator strictly prefers informational consolidation to informational decentralization. Informational delegation is shown to be equivalent to informational decentralization when the regulator can observe the contracting between the units.

We examine the investment decisions of regulated firms in a sequential-equilibrium model under asymmetric information. The regulator is unable to commit to a pricing policy, unlike meachanism-design models, but sets rates after observing the firm's investment. The information conveyed by the firm's investment level alleviates the underinvestment observed under full information with limited regulatory commitment. The equilibrium regulatory strategy can be characterized by a nonlinear rate-of-return schedule. A regulator announcing such a schedule would be able to make a credible commitment.

This paper studies transfer prices and compensation mechanisms in a principal-agent model with moral hazard and private information by the agent. Production requires unobservable effort by the agent and a purchased input. In general it is optimal for the principal to create an internal market for the input and charge the agent a tax or subsidy which differs from the market price. Conditions are found under which the optimal compensation function is given by the difference between a nonlinear "revenue" function depending only on output and a nonlinear transfer pricing function which depends only on the amount of the purchased input.

Consider a company whose customers may purchase annual (or periodic) updates of the product (the book of the year for an encyclopedia, for example). We determine how the profitability of the update affects the price of the company's main product (the encyclopedia). Our major result is that the product's price should be more than the ‘myopic price’ if and only if the profitability of the update is less than the profitability per potential customer. We also show that an increase in the profitability of the update decreases the price of the product, and we derive several other sensitivity results.

Two manufacturers distribute their brands through exclusive retail dealers, and must compete for consumers indirectly by inducing retailers to carry their brands. We compare equilibrium outcomes with and without resale price maintenance. Maximum RPM lowers the retail price if manufacturers cannot employ franchise fees. Minimum RPM raises the retail price if manufacturers cannot set a wholesale price above marginal cost and must employ only a franchise fee. However, these traditional insights are reversed if manufacturers can set both a wholesale price and a franchise fee in the equilibrium without RPM.

This paper considers the intertemporal pricing problem for a monopolist marketing a new product. The key feature differentiating this paper from the extant management science literature on intertemporal pricing is the assumption that consumers are intertemporal utility maximizers. A subgame perfect Nash equilibrium pricing policy is characterized and shown to involve intertemporal price discrimination. We compare this policy to the optimal policy for a monopolist facing myopic consumers and find that for any given state, prices are always lower with rational consumers than with myopic consumers. For plausible parameter values the assumption of consumer rationality can be shown to lead to large differences in optimal prices. Moreover, if a monopolist facing rational consumers implements the optimal myopic consumer pricing policy, profits can be significantly less than if the monopolist follows the equilibrium pricing policy for rational consumers.

A sequential equilibrium model of private antitrust enforcement is presented. Consumers have incomplete information about cartel costs and cannot accurately estimate a priori the damage recovery from an antitrust action. Consumers are able to infer cartel costs from the equilibrium pricing strategy of firms. The universal divinity criterion is used to characterize the sequential equilibrium. It is shown that for a sufficiently large damage multiple, antitrust enforcement effectively increases social welfare.

One of the important issues in the literature on monopolistic competition concerns whether the free entry equilibrium will provide sufficient variety of differentiated brands. This paper examines variety issue using the logit choice model to capture brand differentiation. The consumption value of each brand is drawn from the extreme value distribution, and the consumer then purchases the brand with the highest value. With the resulting demand structure, we find that monopolistic competition results in too few firms and thus too few brands from the viewpoint of consumers. This result supports the findings of other models with symmetrically differentiated brands.

This paper considers the optimal design of antitrust policy when collusive behaviour is unobservable and production costs are private information.1 The analysis shows that asymmetric information can be a significant factor in the decision to tolerate some degree of collusion even though price fixing is illegal per se

This article addresses two significant problems arising from the delegation of law enforcement. First, the policymaker's problem of designing incentives to induce efficient performance by the enforcement agency is examined. Second, the effect of delegation on the enforcer's strategic interaction with potential offenders is specified.

This paper contains an agency-theoretic analysis of procurement contracts in which the government designs optimal linear contracts for a risk-averse supplier in the presence of moral hazard, private information, and imperfect monitoring. Optimal contracts deviate from first-best risk sharing. The direction of the deviation depends on t he relative severity of the moral hazard and private information problem s and on the precision of the monitor. In contrast to the usual result in the moral hazard literature, the government may, in some cases, prefer that the effort of the supplier be taxed. Choice of the precision of the monitor and the categories of costs covered by the monitor are also studied.

This paper examines the effect of rate of regulation on a monopolist that faces a market of observationally identical but heterogeneous consumers. Under plausible technological conditions, rate of return regulation increases the quality offered to any consumer and expands the variety of products it offers. Some consumers receive a quality that is greater than the socially optimal quality. Rate of return regulation unambiguously increases consumers' surplus. If the allowed rate of return is close to the monopoly rate of return, social welfare increases as well.

A monopolist facing a market of heterogeneous consumers will distort the quality array. This paper explores three regulatory remedies--minimum quality standards (MQS), maximum price regulation (MPR), and rate of return regulation (RORR)--that counteract this distortion. MQS and MPR raise the quality offered to consumers with a low willingness-to-pay for quality. While MQS have no effect on the quality offered to consumers with a high willingness-to-pay, MPR decreases the quality offered to this group. If production of high- (low-)quality goods is capital-intensive, RORR increases (decreases) the quality offered to both groups.

A model of entry deterrence is presented in which consumers are perfectly informed about an incumbent monopolist's product quality but are imperfectly informed about the qualities of potential entrants. To deter entry, the monopolist chooses a higher price and quality than he would in the absence of an entry threat.

This paper considers a multiperiod model of a regulated firm that has (stationary) private reformation which may be revealed through performance. If it cannot make commitments to future policies, the regulator has an incentive to exploit any information the firm reveals, and Laffont and Tirole show that there is no regulatory policy that is separating over any closed interval. A "fairness" arrangement is proposed in which the firm agrees not to quit if in future periods the regulator allows it to earn a nonnegative profit given the type it revealed in earlier periods, The properties of such arrangements are studied, and an example is presented in which both the firm and the regulator prefer a fairness arrangement to a policy feasible without commitment.

Lenders usually know less than borrowers about payoff-relevant borrower attributes. These attributes may be a personal characteristic as in Jaffee-Russell [1976] or some parameter of an earnings distribution as in Stiglitz-Weiss (S-W) [1981]. In either case, the informational asymmetry is likely to affect the credit market equilibrium. The principal objective of this paper is to explore the role of market structure in credit allocation when there is such an informational asymmetry. The questions to which we seek answers are: Why do lenders sometimes ration credit even when deposit availability is relatively unconstrained? What is the economic function of collateral and how is its usefulness affected by credit market structure? What is the impact of collateral on credit rationing? Why do we observe cosigners? These issues are analyzed under two market structures. In Section 2, we assume that a bank acts as a price-setting monopolist in the loan market. Two principal results are obtained. First, collateral will not be used unless it is sufficiently valuable to the bank to make the loan riskless. Second, in some cases, the bank's credit policy discourages high-risk borrowers from applying for credit. The bank need not explicitly reject these applicants; it simply raises the loan interest rate to induce them to exit the market.

We study a competitive credit market equilibrium in which all agents are risk neutral and lenders a priori unaware of borrowers' default probabilities. Admissible credit contracts are characterized by the credit granting probability, the loan quantity, the loan interest rate and the collateral required. The principal result is that in equilibrium lower risk borrowers pay higher interest rates than higher risk borrowers; moreover, the lower risk borrowers get more credit in equilibrium than they would with full information. No credit is rationed and collateral requirements are higher for the lower risk borrowers.

This article characterizes the optimal procurement contract for a monopsonistic purchaser who contracts with a risk-averse supplier with private information about his costs and who contributes an unobservable effort. The costs incurred by the supplier may be uncertain, and the purchaser has access to a monitor of costs that may be subject to noise that complicates risk sharing. The purchaser prefers to respond to the observability problem with a fixed-price contract and to respond to the private information problem with a cost-plus contract. With uncertain costs and a perfect monitor the optimal contract relieves the supplier of some risk, and the purchaser prefers that the effort of the supplier be subsidized. With deterministic costs and a noisy monitor the optimal contract places risk on the supplier, and the purchaser may prefer that the effort of the supplier be taxed.

A monopolist that sells in a market in which consumers differ in their willingness to pay for quality will distort and enlarge the range of products offered for sale. We examine the positive and normative impacts of remedies used to counteract such distortions. For the case of a price ceiling, the monopolist improves quality at the low quality end of the market, offsetting the distortion induced by the unregulated exercise of monopoly power. Social welfare can be shown to increase for a sufficiently slight degree of price regulation. For minimum quality standards, the social welfare implications are ambiguous because the standards may exclude some consumers from the market.

Multi-period contracts with adverse selection at the time of contracting are studied. With risk-neutrality and independent private information, all inefficiency arises in the first period only. With positive serial correlation, inefficiency is more pervasive but declines over time.

Regulation typically involves a continuing relationship between a regulator and a firm, and that relationship is often complicated by asymmetric information. A multiperiod model of this relationship is analyzed in which a regulated firm has private information about its costs which may changed over time in a manner observable only to the firm. The regulator is assumed to be able to commit to a policy for the entire regulatory horizon, and the optimal pricing policy is shown to depend on an informativeness measure that indicates how information by the firm in one period will be used in future periods.

This article analyzes a model of a regulated firm that is better informed about its cost function than is the regulator. By auditing at a cost, however, the regulator is assumed to be able to observe the realized cost of the firm. If the regulator "finds" that the firm had misrepresented its costs at the time at which prices were set, he can order a refund to consumers. In the optimal policy the regulator audits when the firm reports for pricing purposes that its costs will be high and orders a refund when the audit finds that realized costs are lower than anticipated, given the original report. A separation result that obtains for an important case indicates that the initial pricing decision is independent of the auditing decision. The auditing decision, however, depends on the price that was initially set. The optimal auditing strategy is characterized and the nature of the welfare gains are identified. The methodology used in the analysis involves the characterization of an equilibrium of a revelation game with an ex post observable.

Learning-by-doing and organizational forgetting have been shown to be important in a variety of industrial settings. This paper provides a general model of dynamic competition that accounts for these economic fundamentals and shows how they shape industry structure and dynamics. Previously obtained results regarding the dominance properties of firms' pricing behavior no longer hold in this more general setting. We show that organizational forgetting does not simply negate learning-by-doing. Rather, learning-by-doing and organizational forgetting are distinct economic forces. In particular, a model with both learning-by-doing and organizational forgetting can give rise to aggressive pricing behavior, market dominance, and multiple equilibria, whereas a model with learning-by-doing alone cannot

In early 2000, Asahi’s senior management was under considerable pressure to launch its own brand of happoshu, a low-end form of beer that enjoyed certain tax benefits under Japanese law. Unlike its major rivals, all of whom had launched happoshu brands in the previous few years, Asahi steadfastly refused to enter the happoshu category. The case allows students to explore the economic logic of Asahi’s strategy. The case can be used to study how the entry of a new product affects price competition across two closely related product categories (beer and happoshu) and how an anticipation of changes in price competition might affect the economics of the launch decision.

Between May, 2000 and January, 2001 the recently deregulated electricity market in the state of California experienced what many commentators have characterized as a meltdown. Over that period wholesale electricity prices increased over 500 percent, power emergencies and the threat of rolling blackouts became daily occurrences, and the state’s largest investor-owned utility was thrust into bankruptcy. This case details California’s attempt to deregulate its wholesale and retail electricity markets and gives students the opportunity to diagnose the causes of California’s crisis. The case contains data that enables students to identify the drivers of increases in the wholesale price of electricity in California.

In 1999 the market for optical fiber was white hot. Several large manufacturers of optical fiber, including Corning, Inc., were considering significant expansions in their production capacity. This case presents the capacity expansion problem from the perspective of Corning, Inc. Students can explore how market fundamentals and strategic considerations shape a firm’s incentives to undertake a major expansion of capacity. Note: the use of this case is restricted to classes at the Kellogg School of Management.

The case describes market experiments conducted by a major credit card issuer. In a typical experiment, the issuer sends out hundreds of thousands of solicitations based on information received from credit reporting agencies (e.g. credit score, past delinquencies, etc.). Selection bias is striking: the average risk profile of those responding to higher interest rates is significantly worse than that of respondents to lower rates. Tracking respondents for 27 months after the experiment, respondents to higher rates displayed significantly higher delinquency and bankruptcy rates. This short case is based on an excellent research paper by Larry Ausubel who obtained proprietary data on the condition of not revealing the name of the issuer. Contact Professor Al-Najjar for teaching methods, slides, and classroom exhibits.

This case considers the competitive strategy of the Channel Tunnel just prior to the time it opened for business in 1994. Focusing specifically on the tunnel's Le Shuttle service for freight and passenger traffic, the case gives students an opportunity to explore whether Le Shuttle should follow a premium pricing strategy relative to the cross-channel ferries, match the ferries' prices, or undercut the ferries' prices. Following a section on the history of the tunnel's construction, the case provides an in-depth discussion of the cross-channel ferry business and the Le Shuttle services. The case concludes by posing the question: What pricing strategy should Le Shuttle follow? The case can be used in a managerial economics course to illustrate the key drivers of price competition in a differentiated products industry: differences in marginal cost, vertical differentiation among competitors, and the degree of horizontal differentiation in the market. The case can also be used in a competitive strategy class to illustrate the sources and sustainability of competitive advantage.

The case describes the events leading up to the imposition of the London congestion charge. Views about the congestion charge, both pro and con, are presented. The case also discusses, in general terms, the economics of traffic congestion, pointing out that an unregulated market for driving will not reach the social optimum. The case contains sufficient data for students to estimate the deadweight loss in an unregulated market. Students can also estimate the reduction of the deadweight loss due to the imposition of the congestion charge in 2003. The case provides a good illustration of how an unregulated market with negative externalities can lead to an overprovision of a good (in this case driving). It also shows how an externality tax (in this case, London’s congestion charge) can lead to an improvement in social welfare.

Motorola invented mobile telephones and by the end of the 1980s came to dominate the mobile handset market with more than 80 percent market share. A few years later, Motorola faced a key strategic choice of whether to focus its considerable resources on consolidating its dominance of the analogue handset market, or to shift these resources to the emerging digital handset technologies. This decision shaped the handset industry and the role Motorola played in it for the next decade. The case provides a vivid illustration of incumbents’ puzzling inertia towards initiating and participating in disruptive technologies.

The case describes the competitive advantages that U.S. farmers enjoy in the global cotton industry and the subsidies they receive from the U.S. federal government. Arguments for and against the subsidies are presented in the context of global competition. The case includes the data needed to estimate a supply curve for 2004 cotton production and predict the average 2004 cotton price using total cotton consumption for 2004. Students can also estimate the result of eliminating the U.S. cotton subsidies on the average 2004 cotton price.

The learning objective of the case is for students to have the opportunity to learn about the history and structure of U.S. cotton subsidies as well as their impact on global cotton prices. Students also are able to practice building and interpreting an industry supply curve.

This case provides a narrative description of the price war in the U.S. airline industry that broke out in the Spring of 1992. The case can be used in competitive strategy or microeconomics classes to explore the root causes of price wars.

In 1996 the St. Louis-based manufacturer Zoltek launched a massive expansion of capacity to produce commercial-grade carbon fiber, a composite material used to produce a wide variety of end products ranging from sporting goods to windmill blades. Zoltek’s goal was to become the dominant firm in a market whose growth was expected to be spectacular starting in the late 1990s. This case describes Zoltek’s major strategic moves in the mid-1990s and can be used to explore the economic logic of a major capacity commitment. The case provides a possible example of the Stackelberg leadership model from oligopoly theory.