Price Caps, Oligopoly, And Entry

2y ago
14 Views
2 Downloads
261.45 KB
34 Pages
Last View : 1m ago
Last Download : 2m ago
Upload by : Luis Wallis
Transcription

Economic Theory manuscript No.(will be inserted by the editor)Price Caps, Oligopoly, and EntryStanley S. Reynolds · David RietzkeReceived: May 8th, 2015 / Accepted: February 11, 2016Abstract We extend the analysis of price caps in oligopoly markets to allow for sunkentry costs and endogenous entry. In the case of deterministic demand and constantmarginal cost, reducing a price cap yields increased total output, consumer welfare,and total welfare; results consistent with those for oligopoly markets with a fixednumber of firms. With deterministic demand and increasing marginal cost these comparative static results may be fully reversed, and a welfare-improving cap may notexist. Recent results in the literature show that for a fixed number of firms, if demandis stochastic and marginal cost is constant then lowering a price cap may either increase or decrease output and welfare (locally); however, a welfare improving pricecap does exist. In contrast to these recent results, we show that a welfare-improvingcap may not exist if entry is endogenous. However, within this stochastic demand environment we show that certain restrictions on the curvature of demand are sufficientto ensure the existence of a welfare-improving cap when entry is endogenous.Keywords price ceiling · price cap · market power · market entry · supermodulargameJEL Classifications D43 L13 L51We thank Rabah Amir, Veronika Grimm, Andras Niedermayer, Gregor Zoettl and two anonymous refereesfor helpful comments and suggestions. Any remaining errors are our own.Stanley S. ReynoldsDepartment of Economics, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona U.S.A.520-621-6251,E-mail: reynolds@eller.arizona.eduDavid RietzkeDepartment of Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, LancasterU.K.E-mail: d.rietzke@lancaster.ac.uk

Price Caps, Oligopoly, and Entry11 IntroductionPrice ceilings or caps are relevant in many areas, including: electricity markets, pharmaceuticals, interest on loans and credit, telecommunications services, taxi services,and housing in urban areas. Price caps are common in pharmaceutical markets outsidethe United States such as in India, where legislation passed in 2013 that significantlyexpanded the number of drugs facing price cap regulation.1 Regulators have imposedprice caps in a number of U.S. regional wholesale electricity markets, including ERCOT (Texas), New England, and PJM. A key goal for price caps in wholesale electricity markets is to limit the exercise of market power. The principle that a price capcan limit market power is well understood in the case of a monopolist with constantmarginal cost in a perfect-information environment. A price cap increases marginalrevenue in those situations where it is binding and incentivizes the monopolist to increase output. Total output, consumer surplus, and total welfare increase as the capdecreases towards marginal cost.Recent papers by Earle et al. [2007] (hereafter, EST) and Grimm and Zottl [2010](hereafter, GZ) examine the effectiveness of price caps in oligopoly markets with constant marginal cost. EST show that while the classic monopoly results for price capscarry over to Cournot oligopoly when demand is certain, these results do not holdunder demand uncertainty.2 In particular, they show that when firms make output decisions prior to the realization of demand, total output, welfare, and consumer surplusmay be locally increasing in the price cap. This result would seem to raise into question the effectiveness of price caps as a welfare-enhancing policy tool. However, GZdemonstrate that, within the framework of Cournot oligopoly with uncertain demandanalyzed by Earle, et al., there exists an interval of prices such that any price cap inthis interval increases both total market output and welfare compared to the no-capcase. Thus, while the standard comparative statics results of price caps may not holdwith uncertain demand, there always exists a welfare-improving price cap.Importantly, prior analyses of oligopoly markets with price caps assume that thenumber of firms is held fixed. Yet an important practical concern with the use ofprice caps is that a binding cap may decrease the profitability of an industry, deterpotential market entrants, and thereby reduce competition. Once entry incentives aretaken into account, the efficacy of price caps for limiting the exercise of market powerand improving welfare is less clear. In this paper we explore the welfare impact ofprice caps, taking firm entry decisions into consideration. We modify the analyses ofEST and GZ by introducing an initial market entry period prior to a second period ofproduct market competition. Market entry requires a firm to incur a sunk cost. Theinclusion of a sunk entry cost introduces economies of scale into the analysis. a-pharmaceuticals-idINKBN0EZ0CT20140624Garcia and Stacchetti [2011] analyze the impact of price caps in a dynamic duopoly model of capacityinvestment, uncertain demand, and bidding that captures key features of wholesale electricity markets.They find that investment incentives are weak due to seller market power, and that price caps are not aneffective tool to incentivize additional investment.2

2Stanley S. Reynolds, David Rietzkewould seem to be a natural formulation, since an oligopolistic market structure in ahomogeneous product market may well be present because of economies of scale.3Given the prominent use of price caps as a regulatory tool in settings with multiplesuppliers, an analysis that fails to consider their impact on market entry decisions maybe missing a vital component. We show that when entry is endogenous, demand isdeterministic, and marginal cost is constant, the standard comparative statics resultscontinue to hold. In this case, a price cap may result in fewer firms, but the incentiveprovided by the cap to increase output overwhelms the incentive to withhold outputdue to a decrease in competition. It follows that, regardless of the number of firms thatenter the market, output increases as the cap is lowered. Welfare gains are realized ontwo fronts. First, the cap increases total output. Second, the cap may deter entry, andin doing so, reduce the total cost associated with entry.We also consider the case of increasing marginal costs of production. When coupled with our sunk entry cost assumption, increasing marginal cost yields a U-shapedaverage cost curve for each active firm. The standard comparative statics results holdfor a range of caps when the number of firms is fixed; a lower cap within this rangeyields greater output and higher welfare. However, these comparative statics resultsneed not hold when entry is endogenous. In fact, we show that if marginal cost risessufficiently rapidly relative to the demand price elasticity, then the standard comparative statics results may be fully reversed; welfare and output may monotonicallydecrease as the cap is lowered. In contrast to results for a fixed number of firms, itmay be the case that any price cap reduces total output and welfare (i.e., there doesnot exist a welfare improving cap). We also provide sufficient conditions for the existence of a welfare-improving cap. These conditions restrict the curvature of demandand marginal cost.We then show that a welfare-improving price cap may not exist when demand isuncertain and entry is endogenous (with firms facing constant marginal cost). Thus,the results of GZ do not generalize to the case of endogenous entry. On the otherhand, we provide sufficient conditions for existence of a welfare-improving pricecap. These conditions restrict the curvature of inverse demand, which in turn influences the extent of the business-stealing effect4 when an additional firm enters themarket. We also consider a version of the model with disposal; firms do not haveto sell the entire quantity they produced, but instead may choose the amount to sellafter demand uncertainty has been resolved. We show that the sufficient condition forexistence of a welfare improving price cap for the no-disposal model carries over tothe model with disposal. Our results for the model with disposal are complementaryto results in Lemus and Moreno [2013] on the impact of a price cap on a monopolist’s capacity investment. They show that a price cap influences welfare through twoseparate channels: an investment effect, and an effect on output choices made afterrealization of a demand shock. Our formulation with disposal allows for welfare tooperate through these two channels as well as a third channel; firm entry decisions.3 Cottle and Wallace [1983] consider a possible reduction in the number of firms in their analysis of aprice ceiling in a perfectly competitive market subject to demand uncertainty. Our interest is in the impactof price caps in oligopoly markets in which entry is endogenous.4 The business-stealing effect refers to the tendency of per-firm equilibrium output to decrease in thenumber of firms.

Price Caps, Oligopoly, and Entry3In order to highlight the role of discrete entry decisions in our analysis, we examine an environment in which the number of firms, n, is continuous. This maybe interpreted as an environment in which the size of firms may easily adjusted.For the continuous-n case, we provide a sufficient condition under which a welfareimproving cap exists with either deterministic demand or stochastic demand, allowing for convex costs and free disposal. As in the discrete-n/stochastic demand case,the sufficient condition restricts the curvature of demand and implies the presence ofthe business-stealing effect. The condition is not sufficient to ensure the existence ofa welfare-improving cap when n is discrete, thus highlighting the relevance of theinteger constraint in our model.Our results imply that policy makers should be aware of the potential impact ofprice caps on firm entry decisions. We also bring to light three important considerations for assessing the impact of price caps, which are not apparent in model witha fixed number of firms. First, our results suggest that industries characterized by aweak business-stealing effect are less likely to benefit from the imposition of a pricecap than industries where this effect is strong. Second, our results indicate that industries in which firms face sharply rising marginal cost curves are less likely to benefitfrom a price cap, than industries where marginal cost is less steep. Third, our resultssuggest that industries in which the size of firms can be easily adjusted are morelikely to benefit from price cap regulation.Our model of endogenous entry builds on results and insights from Mankiw andWhinston [1986] and Amir and Lambson [2000]. Mankiw and Whinston show thatwhen total output is increasing in the number of firms but per-firm output is decreasing in the number of firms (the term for the latter is the business-stealing effect),the socially optimal number of firms will be less than the free-entry number of firmswhen the number of firms, n, is continuous. For discrete n the free entry number offirms may be less than the socially optimal number of firms, but never by more thanone. Intuitively, when a firm chooses to enter, it does not take into account decreasesin per-firm output and profit of the other active firms. Thus, the social gain from entrymay be less than the private gain to the entrant. Amir and Lambson provide a taxonomy of the effects of entry on output in Cournot markets. In particular, they providea general condition under which equilibrium total output is increasing in the numberof firms. Our results rely heavily on their approach and results.2 The ModelWe assume an arbitrarily large number, N N, of symmetric potential market entrants, and formulate a two-period game. The N potential entrants are ordered in aqueue and make sequential entry decisions in period one. Each firm’s entry decisionis observed by the other firms. There is a cost of entry K 0, which is sunk if a firmenters. If a firm does not enter it receives a payoff of zero.55 An alternative formulation involves simultaneous entry decisions in period one. Pure strategy subgameperfect equilibria for this alternative model formulation are equivalent to those of our sequential entrymodel.

4Stanley S. Reynolds, David RietzkeThe n market entrants produce a homogeneous good in period two. Each firmfaces a strictly increasing, convex cost function, C : R R . Output decisionsare made simultaneously. The inverse demand function is given by P(Q, θ ) whichdepends on total output, Q, and a random variable, θ . The random variable, θ , is continuously distributed according to CDF F with corresponding density f . The supportof θ is compact and given by Θ [θ , θ ] R. Each firm knows the distribution of θbut must make its output decision prior to its realization. A regulator may impose aprice cap, denoted p. The following assumption is in effect throughout the paper.Assumption 1(a) P is continuous in Q and θ , strictly decreasing in Q for fixed θ , and strictlyincreasing in θ for fixed Q.(b) lim {QP(Q, θ ) C(Q)} 0Q (c) max {QE[P(Q, θ )] C(Q)} KQ R Assumption (1a) matches the assumptions imposed by EST; GZ additionally assumedifferentiability of inverse demand in Q and θ . Assumption (1b) ensures that a profitmaximizing quantity exists for period two decisions.EST assume that E[P(0, θ )] is greater than marginal cost, which is assumed tobe constant in their analysis. Their assumption ensures that “production is gainful”;that is, given a fixed number, n 0, of market participants, there exist price capssuch that equilibrium market output will be strictly positive. Our Assumption (1c) isa “profitable entry” condition, which guarantees that there exist price caps such thatat least one firm enters the market and that equilibrium output will be strictly positive.We let P denote the set of price caps which induce at least one market entrant. Thatis P p 0 max {QE[min{P(Q, θ ), p}] C(Q)} KQ R Assumption 1 implies P 6 0./ In this paper we are only concerned with price capsp P. We restrict attention to subgame-perfect pure strategy equilibria and focus onperiod two subgame equilibria that are symmetric with respect to the set of marketentrants. For a given price cap and a fixed number of firms, there may exist multipleperiod two subgame equilibria. As is common in the oligopoly literature we focuson extremal equilibria - the equilibria with the smallest and largest total output levels- and comparisons between extremal equilibria. So when there is a change in theprice cap we compare equilibrium outcomes before and after the change, taking intoaccount the change (if any) in the equilibrium number of firms, while supposing thatsubgame equilibria involve either maximal output or minimal output.One other point to note. Imposing a price cap may require demand rationing.When rationing occurs, we assume rationing is efficient; i.e., rationed units are allocated to buyers with the highest willingness-to-pay. This is consistent with prioranalyses of oligopoly with price caps.66 Rationing may occur in equilibrium when demand is stochastic. Our propositions regarding welfareimproving price caps when demand is stochastic build on results from GZ, who assume efficient rationing.

Price Caps, Oligopoly, and Entry5We denote by Q n (p) (q n (p)), period two subgame extremal equilibrium total (perfirm) output7 when n firms enter and the price cap is p. We let πn (p) denote each firm’s expected period two profit in this equilibrium. We also let Q n Qn ( ) be theperiod two equilibrium total output when n firms enter with no price cap, and define q n and πn analogously. Firms are risk neutral and make output decisions to maximizeexpected profit. That is, each firm i takes the total output of its rivals, y, as given andchooses q to maximizeπ(q, y, p) E[q min{P(q y, θ ), p} C(q)]After being placed in the queue, firms have an incentive to enter as long as theirexpected period two equilibrium profit is at least as large as the cost of entry. Weassume that firms whose expected second period profits are exactly equal to the costof entry will choose to enter. For a fixed price cap, p, subgame perfection in theentry period (along with the indifference assumption) implies that the equilibriumnumber of firms, n , is the largest positive integer less than (or equal to) N such thatπn (p) K. Clearly, n exists and is unique. Moreover, for any p P we also haven 1.3 Deterministic DemandWe begin our analysis by considering a deterministic inverse demand function. Thatis, the distribution of θ places unit mass at some particular θ̃ Θ . In this section, wesuppress the second argument in the inverse demand function and simply write P(Q).We study both the case of constant marginal cost and strictly increasing marginalcost.3.1 Constant Marginal CostSuppose marginal cost is constant : C(q) cq, where c 0. For a given number,n N, of market participants EST prove the existence of a period two subgame equilibrium that is symmetric for the n firms. Our main result in this section demonstratesthat the classic results on price caps continue to hold when entry is endogenous; allproofs are in the Appendix.Proposition 1 Restrict attention to p P. In an extremal equilibrium, the number offirms is non decreasing in the cap, while total output, total welfare, and consumersurplus are non-increasing in the price cap.Proposition 1 is similar to Theorem 1 in EST. However, our model takes intoaccount the effects of price caps on firm entry decisions. As we show in the proof7 We do not introduce notation to distinguish between maximal and minimal equilibrium output. Inmost cases our arguments and results are identical for equilibria with maximal and minimal total outputs.We will indicate where arguments and/or results differ for the two types of equilibrium.

6Stanley S. Reynolds, David Rietzkeof Proposition 1, firm entry decisions are potentially an important consideration asequilibrium output is non-decreasing in the number of firms (for a fixed cap). Thisfact, along with the fact that a lower price cap may deter entry, suggest that a reductionin the cap could have the effect of lowering the number of firms and reducing totaloutput. Our result shows that with constant marginal cost and non-stochastic demand,even if entry is reduced, the incentive for increased production with a cap dominatesthe possible reduction in output due to less entry. There are two sources of welfaregains. First, total output is decreasing in the price cap, so a lower price cap yieldseither constant or reduced deadweight loss. Second, a lower price cap may reduce thenumber of firms, and thereby decrease the total sunk costs of entry.In a recent contribution, Amir et al. [2014] show that if demand is log-convexthen, in the absence of a price cap, the free-entry number of firms may be strictly lessthan the socially-optimal number of firms. In such instances, one may be particularlyconcerned that a price cap that deters entry may lead to a reduction in welfare. It isworth pointing out, however, that Proposition 1 applies even in this setting. Intuitively,the incentive provided by the cap to expand output will dominate any potential reduction in output caused by entry deterrence. The following example, which is based onExample 1 in Amir et al., illustrates this point.Example 1 Consider the following inverse demand, and costs:P(Q) 1; c 0, K .02592(Q 1)5With no cap, 2 firms enter, total equilibrium output is .6, and the equilibriumprice is approximately .07776. Equilibrium per-firm profit is exactly equal to the costof entry, and equilibrium welfare is .16576. Note that the socially-optimal number offirms without a cap is 3. Any cap, p (.02302, .07776) results in exactly 1 entrant,and total output satisfies: P(Q (p)) p; so, Q (p) p15 1. Any cap in the interval(.02302, .07776) results in higher total output and welfare than in the absence of acap. For instance, a cap equal to .07 results in total output of approximately .70208and welfare of approximately .19429. As the cap decreases within this interval, it iseasy to see that total output and welfare both (strictly) increase monotonically.Assumption 1 allows for a very general demand function, and because of this,there may be multiple equilibria. Proposition 1 provides results for extremal equilibria of period two subgames for cases with multiple equilibria. With an additionalrestriction on the class of demand functions, the equilibrium is unique and we achievea stronger result on the impact of changes in the price cap.Proposition 2 Suppose P is log-concave in output. Then for any p P there exists aunique symmetric subgame equilibrium in the period 2 subgame. Moreover, equilibrium output, welfare, and consumer surplus are strictly decreasing in the cap for allp P(Q ) and p P.The intuition behind Proposition 2 is straightforward. When inverse demand islog-concave, there is a unique symmetric period two subgame equilibrium for each nand p. If p is less than the equilibrium price when there is no cap then p must bind

Price Caps, Oligopoly, and Entry7in the subgame equilibrium. With no cap, Amir and Lambson [2000] show that thesubgame equilibrium price is non-increasing in n. Any price cap below the no-capfree-entry equilibrium price must bind in equilibrium, since the number of firms thatenter will be no greater than the number of firms that enter in the absence of a cap. Alower price cap therefore yields strictly greater total output.A consequence of our results is that the welfare-maximizing price cap is the lowest cap that induces exactly one firm to enter. Imposing such a cap both increasesoutput and reduces entry costs. Since marginal cost is constant, the total industry costof producing a given level of total output does not depend on the number of marketentrants.3.2 Increasing Marginal CostThe assumption that marginal cost is constant is not innocuous. In this section, weconsider a variation of the deterministic demand model in which firms have symmetric, strictly increasing marginal costs of production. This assumption on marginalcost, coupled with a sunk cost of entry, implies that firms have U-shaped average cost.We assume that the cost function, C : R R , is twice continuously differentiablewith C(0) 0, C0 (x) 0 and C00 (x) 0 for all x R .Reynolds and Rietzke [2015] show that when the number of firms is fixed, thereexists a range of caps under which extremal equilibrium output and associated welfareare monotonically non-increasing in the cap.8 This range of caps consists of all pricecaps above the n-firm competitive equilibrium price. Intuitively, price caps above thisthreshold are high enough that marginal cost in equilibrium is strictly below the pricecap for each firm. A slight decrease in the price cap means the incentive to increaseoutput created by a lower cap outweighs the fact that marginal cost has increased(since the cap still lies above marginal cost).9We now provide an example, which demonstrates that the results for the fixed-nmodel do not carry over to our model with endogenous entry. In fact, our exampleshows that the comparative statics results for a change in the price cap may be fullyreversed with endogenous entry, and a welfare-improving cap may not exist.Example 2 Consider the following inverse demand and cost function:P(Q) aQ1/η , C(q) (1 γ)γq γ(1 γ)These functions yield iso-elastic demand and competitive, single-firm supply functions with price elasticities η and γ, respectively. Suppose that a 96, η 2 ,8 Neither EST nor GZ devote significant attention to the issue of increasing marginal cost. Both papersstate that their main results for stochastic demand hold for increasing marginal cost as well as for constantmarginal cost. Neither paper addresses whether the classical monotonicity results hold for a fixed numberof firms, deterministic demand, and increasing marginal cost.9 The technical argument reveals that, for price caps above the n-firm competitive price, and outputchoices less than the n-firm competitive level, each firm’s profit function satisfies the dual single-crossingproperty in (q; p), for fixed y. The proof in Reynolds and Rietzke [2015] relies on results from Milgromand Roberts [1994] and Milgrom and Shannon [1994].

8Stanley S. Reynolds, David Rietzkeγ 1, and K 7.5. Then absent a price cap, two firms enter, each firm produces 3units of output and the equilibrium price is 4. Each firm earns product market payoffof 7.5 and zero total profit, since product market payoff is equal to the sunk entrycost. For price caps between minimum average total cost ATCm of 3.87 and 4, onefirm enters and total output and welfare are strictly less than output and welfare in theno-cap case.Duopoly firms exert market power and the equilibrium price exceeds marginalcost in Example 2. However, profits are completely dissipated through entry. Imposing a price cap in this circumstance does indeed limit market power. However, a pricecap also reduces entry, results in rationing of buyers, and yields lower total output, total welfare and consumer surplus than the no-cap equilibrium. A welfare-improvingprice cap does not exist for this example. In fact, total output and welfare are increasing in the price cap for p [ATCm , P(Q )). A welfare improvement could beachieved by a policy that combines an entry subsidy - to encourage entry - with aprice cap - to incentivize increased output.It is worth pointing out that the integer constraint on n plays a role in the example.In a subgame with n firms, a cap set below the n-firm competitive price results indemand rationing. If the n 1 firm competitive price is greater than the n firmCournot price (as is the case for the parameters given), then a binding cap that detersentry must therefore lead to rationing. If n is continuous, then a sufficiently high cap(which results in a small reduction in the number of firms) need not lead to rationing.This issue is explored further in Section 5.Proposition 3 below provides sufficient conditions for existence of a welfareimproving price cap. The key condition is that the equilibrium price in the no-capcase exceeds the competitive equilibrium price in the event that one less firm entersthe market. This condition rules out outcomes such as that of Example 2 in which abinding price cap reduces the number of firms and yields a discrete reduction in output. In what follows, we let n denote the equilibrium number of firms when there isno price cap and let pcn denote the competitive equilibrium price when n firms enter.Proposition 3 Suppose that P(·) is log-concave in output. If P(Q ) pcn 1 then awelfare-improving price cap exists.Proposition 3 is based on two conditions. The first is that demand is log-concavein output. Log-concavity of demand implies that, in the absence of a price cap, there isa unique symmetric subgame equilibrium in stage 2. As a result, in a subgame with nfirms, a cap set below the n-firm Cournot price must bind in equilibrium. The secondcondition is that the n 1-firm competitive price is strictly less than the n -firmCournot price. Consider a cap p (pcn 1 , P(Q )), which is also sufficiently highso as to deter no more than 1 entrant. Log-concave demand implies that such a capmust bind in equilibrium. Hence, total output must be higher than in the absence of acap. As in the case of constant MC, welfare gains are realized on two fronts: greaterproduction, which increases consumer surplus, and entry cost savings associated withfewer market participants. Still, the welfare impact of the price cap is not immediately

Price Caps, Oligopoly, and Entry9obvious since the cap may decrease the number of market entrants; with a convexcost function, total production costs for a given level of output are higher with fewermarket entrants. We are able to show, however, that for high enough caps the twosources of welfare gains are large enough to offset the increase in production costs.The condition in Proposition 3 that equilibrium price with no cap and n firmsexceeds the competitive price with n 1 firms depends on the relative steepnessof demand and supply curves. This condition is satisfied for the parametric demandand (competitive) supply functions in Example 2 if the elasticity of supply exceedsa threshold level that is increasing in the (absolute value of) elasticity of demand.Specifically, elasticities must satisfy:γ n)ln( n 1ηn)ln( ηn 1in order to satisfy this condition.4 Stochastic DemandWe now investigate the impact of price caps when demand is stochastic. In thissection we assume marginal cost is constant, so C(q) cq. For the fixed n modelwith stochastic demand GZ demonstrate that there exists a range of price caps whichstrictly increase output and welfare as compared to the case with no cap. Their resultis driven by the following observation. Fix an extremal symmetric equilibrium of thegame with n firms and no price cap. Let ρ P(Q n , θ ) denote the lowest price capthat does not affect prices; i.e., ρ is the maximum price in the no-cap equilibrium.And let MRn be a firm’s maximum marginal revenue in this equilibrium; that is: Q n MRn max P(Q ,θ) P(Q,θ)1nnnθ ΘIf firms choose their equilibrium outputs and a cap is set between MRn andρ then the cap will bind for an interval of high demand shocks; for these shocksmarginal revenue will exceed what marginal revenue would have been in the absenceof a cap, and for other shocks marginal revenue is unchanged. Firms therefore havean incentive to increase output relative to the no cap case for caps between MRn andρ .10 EST provide a quite different result for price caps when demand is stochastic.They show that decreasing a

Price Caps, Oligopoly, and Entry Stanley S. Reynolds David Rietzke Received: May 8th, 2015 / Accepted: February 11, 2016 Abstract We extend the analysis of price caps in oligopoly markets to allow for sunk entry costs and endogenou

Related Documents:

Central to the oligopoly problem is the question of how price is formed in oligopoly markets. Given a market setting, strategy describes behavior. The question then becomes what strategies oligopoly firms use to form price. Game-theoretic oligopoly theories have mainly con-sidered two

owned firms. Social welfare is often characterized as the sum o f pro- ducer and consumer surpluses. Although the mixed oligopoly mark et is similar to oligopoly market, the essential difference lies in the objective of a few firms, namely, public f

Secciones: Caps 1-2 Origen de la vida Caps 3-4 Origen de la maldad Cap 5 Plan divino para solucionar la maldad Cap 6 Invasión de la maldad Caps 7-9 Noé, un nuevo comienzo Caps 10-11 Origen de las naciones rebeldes Caps 12-50 Origen de la familia que acabará con la rebelión mundial Detalles esenciales: Caps 1-2 Origen de la vida Antes de genesis 1:1

tegrated markets, sometimes referred to as unified markets. Markusen (1981) shows that trade by a Cournot oligopoly increases world welfare, but that it is possible for a large country to lose. An-other early contribution to trade and oligopoly

oligopoly. Accordingly, the interexchange market would need to evolve from what he sees as dominance down through tight oligopoly to a condition of medium to loose oligopoly, in order for deregulation to be proper

Types of task Written report Test Test Project Case study Compliance with NCS or CAPS NCS and CAPS CAPS only NCS only NCS and CAPS NCS and CAPS Content covered Part (a): Report on a listed JSE company Part (b): Internal auditor’s report on company internal control Asset

Page 3 of 22 The #10 Caps The #11 Caps (note the RWS 1075s are categorized as #11 caps because they fit the same cones as caps marked as #11) The Remington #10 Cap is the longest cap of the bunch. This confuses people because it appears to be the "largest cap," when in fact it

The American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA) Relief Fund provides support and temporary financial assistance to members who are in need. AGMA contracts with The Actors Fund to administer this program nationally as well as to provide comprehensive social services. Services include counseling and referrals for personal, family or work-related problems. Outreach is made to community resources for .