Questions tagged [competition]
89 questions
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Why is collective bargaining by a group of employees not the same thing as price-fixing?
Employees sell their labor for wages. If a critical mass of employees get together and demand higher wages, how is this not the same thing as a critical mass of merchants illegally fixing the price of some commodity?
Can't a strong union be…
Deane
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Is net neutrality not important in a competitive market of internet providers?
In my understanding, allowing ISP to throttle sites that use a lot of traffic is just price discrimination. The ISP will charge sites like Netflix, which will then pass the cost to Netflix consumers. So basically people who use a lot of data will…
Heisenberg
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Why wouldn't competition prevent "usurious" payday loan rates?
The current Wiki page on "Payday Loans" claims loans are priced above marginal cost. The justification is that
If a lender chooses to innovate and reduce cost to borrowers in order to secure a larger share of the market, the competing lenders will…
tba
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Competition and welfare - empirical evidence
Consider the following claims:
less competitive markets deliver worse outcomes for consumers,
less competitive markets deliver lower social welfare,
less competitive markets deliver higher prices/lower quality.
These might be considered fairly…
Ubiquitous
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Why don't Burgers cost 5 cents?
In this blog post, economist Bob Murphy raises a puzzle involving the principle that in a competitive market, the price equals the marginal cost:
There’s a general principle from intro to microeconomics that says in
a competitive industry, in…
Keshav Srinivasan
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7
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Benefits of a cartel among firms
Suppose I have $n>2$ firms selling differentiated products. These firms form a cartel for the price. The cartel has size $n_c$. Let $\pi_{i,m}$ be the payoff of a firm $i$ outside the cartel and $\pi_{j,c}$ be the payoff of a firm $j$ inside the…
user3285148
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Measuring effects of degree of (buyer) competition on price: references
I would like to examine the effect of degree of competition (market power?) among buyers on price of a product. I have data on product price, number of buyers with nonzero purchases and a couple more variables in multiple (around 400) different…
Richard Hardy
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Do companies have non compete agreements between each other?
Do companies also know for a better lack of words armistice? When searching for non compete agreements everything that comes up are agreements between companies and employees, but do whole companies also have non compete agreements with other…
Hakaishin
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In microeconomics : is this the contradiction in the atomicity of firms ?
Let $p$ be the market demand. It is a function of the market production $Q$. Let $q_i$ be the production of firm $i$.
Reading Steve Keen (in Debunking Economics, chapter II) quoting George Stigler, I think the first wants to deduce the following…
Cecil Faux
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Why is Uber worth almost as much as Boeing?
At $68 billion, Uber has a higher valuation than GM, Ford, and Honda.
According to Microaxis, Boeing is currently valued at around $87 billion.
Why is Uber worth so much? I would think that judging the value of companies would be similar to…
spacetyper
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6
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Monopolistic and Bertrand (Nash) Competition
Can we view the monopolistic competition equilibrium (a la Dixit-Stigliz) as the limit case of a Bertrand competition with an infinite number of firms providing differentiated products, where the resulting equilibrium is a Nash equilibrium in…
emeryville
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Why have so many legitimate smaller biotechs sprung up and thrived?
I stumbled this question on r/AskScienceDiscussion, but I'd like to ask it from a microeconomics or competition standpoint.
Why can't Big Pharma accomplish what legitimate small biotechs have? Unquestionably Big Pharma has more money and can corner…
user4020
5
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1 answer
Has it truly been established that the restaurant industry operates on thin margins?
For as long as I can remember I've constantly seen the truism that restaurants operate on "razor sharp margins" repeated endlessly by the media, the restaurant industry, and the average joe. This seems to be something that people take for granted,…
Ciudadano
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Intermediate Case of Bertrand and Cournot
I am wondering whether there is a model of oligopolies in which we have some intermediate case of Bertrand and Cournot competition. What I do not mean by "intermediate" is the mixed Bertrand - Cournot game in which one firm sets a price and the…
HRSE
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What is the difference between a free market and a perfectly competitive market?
I am trying to find the distinction between a free market and a perfectly competitive market, and I can't find the right definition on what makes them different. Can someone give me a clearly expressed definition on what makes one different from the…
The Artist
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