This paper investigates the welfare effects of vertical integration in China’s movie industry. We leverage data covering all theaters and 423 popular movies in China during 2014–2018. We find no evidence of integrated movies being foreclosed to rival theaters. Integrated theaters show movies for longer, allocate more screenings, and charge lower prices. We estimate a model of consumers’ demand and theaters’ screening decisions. Integrated theaters internalize a substantial fraction of their upstream companies’ profits. Vertical integration mitigates distortions from revenue-sharing contracts and steers demand favoring integrated movies. Overall, vertical integration increases consumer surplus with considerable heterogeneity across markets. (JEL D12, D22, L22, L82, O14, P23)
{"title":"The Welfare Effects of Vertical Integration in China’s Movie Industry","authors":"Luming Chen, Lisa Xuejie Yi, Chuan Yu","doi":"10.1257/mic.20210320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20210320","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the welfare effects of vertical integration in China’s movie industry. We leverage data covering all theaters and 423 popular movies in China during 2014–2018. We find no evidence of integrated movies being foreclosed to rival theaters. Integrated theaters show movies for longer, allocate more screenings, and charge lower prices. We estimate a model of consumers’ demand and theaters’ screening decisions. Integrated theaters internalize a substantial fraction of their upstream companies’ profits. Vertical integration mitigates distortions from revenue-sharing contracts and steers demand favoring integrated movies. Overall, vertical integration increases consumer surplus with considerable heterogeneity across markets. (JEL D12, D22, L22, L82, O14, P23)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"27 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141036444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In many online markets, consumers have to spend time and effort browsing through products. The addition of new products could make other products less visible, creating congestion externalities. Using Android app store data, I take advantage of a natural experiment—a redesign of part of the store—to show evidence of congestion externalities online: more apps in the market directly reduce per app usage/downloads. The natural experiment also increases long-run entry, but a structural demand model that accounts for congestion externalities suggests that 40 percent of consumer variety welfare gains are lost from higher congestion. (JEL D12, D22, D62, L86)
{"title":"Variety-Based Congestion in Online Markets: Evidence from Mobile Apps","authors":"Daniel Ershov","doi":"10.1257/mic.20200347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20200347","url":null,"abstract":"In many online markets, consumers have to spend time and effort browsing through products. The addition of new products could make other products less visible, creating congestion externalities. Using Android app store data, I take advantage of a natural experiment—a redesign of part of the store—to show evidence of congestion externalities online: more apps in the market directly reduce per app usage/downloads. The natural experiment also increases long-run entry, but a structural demand model that accounts for congestion externalities suggests that 40 percent of consumer variety welfare gains are lost from higher congestion. (JEL D12, D22, D62, L86)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"27 20","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141048842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A monopolist data seller offers information to privately informed data buyers. I characterize the seller’s optimal menu, which screens between two types of buyers. Buyers’ preferences for information allow the seller to extract all surplus, and the optimal menu’s features are determined by the interaction between buyers’ strategic incentives and the correlation of their private information. The seller offers perfect information to the buyer with the highest willingness to pay and partial information, which makes this type indifferent. Both experiments are informative even when buyers have congruent beliefs if they have coordination (anticoordination) incentives and their private information is negatively (positively) correlated. (JEL D21, D42, D82, D83)
{"title":"Strategic Incentives and the Optimal Sale of Information","authors":"Rosina Rodríguez Olivera","doi":"10.1257/mic.20210372","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20210372","url":null,"abstract":"A monopolist data seller offers information to privately informed data buyers. I characterize the seller’s optimal menu, which screens between two types of buyers. Buyers’ preferences for information allow the seller to extract all surplus, and the optimal menu’s features are determined by the interaction between buyers’ strategic incentives and the correlation of their private information. The seller offers perfect information to the buyer with the highest willingness to pay and partial information, which makes this type indifferent. Both experiments are informative even when buyers have congruent beliefs if they have coordination (anticoordination) incentives and their private information is negatively (positively) correlated. (JEL D21, D42, D82, D83)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"131 S212","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141040671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Contributions toward public goods often reveal information that is useful to others considering their own contributions. This experiment compares static and dynamic contribution decisions to determine how contingent reasoning differs in dynamic decisions where equilibrium requires understanding how future information can inform about prior events. This identifies partially cursed individuals who can only extract partial information from contingent events, others who are better at extracting information from past rather than future or concurrent events, and Nash players who effectively perform contingent thinking. Contrary to equilibrium, the dynamic provision mechanism does not lead to lower contributions than the static mechanism. (JEL C92, D71, D82, D91, H41)
{"title":"Contingent Reasoning and Dynamic Public Goods Provision","authors":"Evan M. Calford, T. Cason","doi":"10.1257/mic.20220111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20220111","url":null,"abstract":"Contributions toward public goods often reveal information that is useful to others considering their own contributions. This experiment compares static and dynamic contribution decisions to determine how contingent reasoning differs in dynamic decisions where equilibrium requires understanding how future information can inform about prior events. This identifies partially cursed individuals who can only extract partial information from contingent events, others who are better at extracting information from past rather than future or concurrent events, and Nash players who effectively perform contingent thinking. Contrary to equilibrium, the dynamic provision mechanism does not lead to lower contributions than the static mechanism. (JEL C92, D71, D82, D91, H41)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"72 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141031399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
E-commerce has led to a surge in products being returned after purchase. We analyze product returns as resulting from a trade-off between the social waste of returns and the search efficiency gains of being able to inspect a product’s value after purchase. We find whenever returns are efficient, the market generates too few returns, as the parties involved in the transaction do not internalize the welfare benefit of consumers continuing their search, generating profits for other firms. We also show, despite their consumer-friendly appearance and the private cost of returns, firms may benefit and capture the gains from less costly search. (JEL D11, D21, D83, L25)
{"title":"Consumer Search and Product Returns in E-Commerce","authors":"Maarten Janssen, Cole Williams","doi":"10.1257/mic.20230040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20230040","url":null,"abstract":"E-commerce has led to a surge in products being returned after purchase. We analyze product returns as resulting from a trade-off between the social waste of returns and the search efficiency gains of being able to inspect a product’s value after purchase. We find whenever returns are efficient, the market generates too few returns, as the parties involved in the transaction do not internalize the welfare benefit of consumers continuing their search, generating profits for other firms. We also show, despite their consumer-friendly appearance and the private cost of returns, firms may benefit and capture the gains from less costly search. (JEL D11, D21, D83, L25)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141055304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first mover’s information (toxic argumentation). We reframe both settings as constrained optimization of the first mover. We show that when the preferences are zero-sum or risk-neutral, constructive debates reveal the state, while toxic debates are completely uninformative. Moreover, constructive debates reveal the state under the assumption on preferences that capture autocratic regimes, whereas toxic debates are completely uninformative under the assumption on preferences that capture democratic regimes. (JEL D72, D82, D83)
{"title":"Constructive versus Toxic Argumentation in Debates","authors":"Tymofiy Mylovanov, Andriy Zapechelnyuk","doi":"10.1257/mic.20220114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20220114","url":null,"abstract":"Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first mover’s information (toxic argumentation). We reframe both settings as constrained optimization of the first mover. We show that when the preferences are zero-sum or risk-neutral, constructive debates reveal the state, while toxic debates are completely uninformative. Moreover, constructive debates reveal the state under the assumption on preferences that capture autocratic regimes, whereas toxic debates are completely uninformative under the assumption on preferences that capture democratic regimes. (JEL D72, D82, D83)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"47 4","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139897563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first mover’s information (toxic argumentation). We reframe both settings as constrained optimization of the first mover. We show that when the preferences are zero-sum or risk-neutral, constructive debates reveal the state, while toxic debates are completely uninformative. Moreover, constructive debates reveal the state under the assumption on preferences that capture autocratic regimes, whereas toxic debates are completely uninformative under the assumption on preferences that capture democratic regimes. (JEL D72, D82, D83)
{"title":"Constructive versus Toxic Argumentation in Debates","authors":"Tymofiy Mylovanov, Andriy Zapechelnyuk","doi":"10.1257/mic.20220114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20220114","url":null,"abstract":"Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first mover’s information (toxic argumentation). We reframe both settings as constrained optimization of the first mover. We show that when the preferences are zero-sum or risk-neutral, constructive debates reveal the state, while toxic debates are completely uninformative. Moreover, constructive debates reveal the state under the assumption on preferences that capture autocratic regimes, whereas toxic debates are completely uninformative under the assumption on preferences that capture democratic regimes. (JEL D72, D82, D83)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"149 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139894126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We provide two nested models of random reference-dependent choice in which the reference point is endogenously determined by random processes. Random choice behavior is due to random reference points, even though, from the decision-maker’s viewpoint, choices are deterministic. Through a revealed preference exercise, we establish when and how one can identify the reference-dependent preferences and the random reference rule from observed choice data. We also present behavioral postulates that characterize the empirical content of our models. Lastly, we investigate an application of our model to Bertrand competition with differentiated products. (JEL D11, D91)
{"title":"A Random Reference Model","authors":"Özgür Kıbrıs, Yusufcan Masatlioglu, Elchin Suleymanov","doi":"10.1257/mic.20220089","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20220089","url":null,"abstract":"We provide two nested models of random reference-dependent choice in which the reference point is endogenously determined by random processes. Random choice behavior is due to random reference points, even though, from the decision-maker’s viewpoint, choices are deterministic. Through a revealed preference exercise, we establish when and how one can identify the reference-dependent preferences and the random reference rule from observed choice data. We also present behavioral postulates that characterize the empirical content of our models. Lastly, we investigate an application of our model to Bertrand competition with differentiated products. (JEL D11, D91)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"6 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139897408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We show that a probability distribution likelihood ratio dominates another distribution if and only if, for every weighted utility function, the former is preferred over the latter. Likewise, a probability distribution hazard rate (or reverse hazard rate) dominates another distribution if and only if, the former is preferred by every optimistic (or pessimistic) decision maker. (JEL D11, D83)
{"title":"Weighted Utility and Optimism/Pessimism: A Decision-Theoretic Foundation of Various Stochastic Dominance Orders","authors":"Taoli Wang, Ehud Lehrer","doi":"10.1257/mic.20220350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20220350","url":null,"abstract":"We show that a probability distribution likelihood ratio dominates another distribution if and only if, for every weighted utility function, the former is preferred over the latter. Likewise, a probability distribution hazard rate (or reverse hazard rate) dominates another distribution if and only if, the former is preferred by every optimistic (or pessimistic) decision maker. (JEL D11, D83)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"90 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139893895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We study the profitability of bundling by an upstream firm that licenses technologies to downstream competitors and that faces competition for one of its technologies. In an otherwise standard “ Chicago-style” model, the existence of downstream competition can make inefficient bundling profitable. Forcing downstream firms to use an inefficient technology reassures each one that it will face weak competition. This allows the upstream firm to extract more profit through its monopolized technology. A similar logic can make it profitable to degrade interoperability with rival technologies, even without foreclosing competition. Bundling is most profitable when downstream competition is intense and technologies complementary. (JEL D21, D24, D43, D45, G34, L24)
{"title":"Anticompetitive Bundling When Buyers Compete","authors":"Alexandre de Cornière, Greg Taylor","doi":"10.1257/mic.20230051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20230051","url":null,"abstract":"We study the profitability of bundling by an upstream firm that licenses technologies to downstream competitors and that faces competition for one of its technologies. In an otherwise standard “ Chicago-style” model, the existence of downstream competition can make inefficient bundling profitable. Forcing downstream firms to use an inefficient technology reassures each one that it will face weak competition. This allows the upstream firm to extract more profit through its monopolized technology. A similar logic can make it profitable to degrade interoperability with rival technologies, even without foreclosing competition. Bundling is most profitable when downstream competition is intense and technologies complementary. (JEL D21, D24, D43, D45, G34, L24)","PeriodicalId":517133,"journal":{"name":"American Economic Journal: Microeconomics","volume":"11 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139897208","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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