The Experts below are selected from a list of 19659 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Galit Shmueli - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Consumer Surplus in online auctions
Information Systems Research, 2008Co-Authors: Ravi Bapna, Wolfgang Jank, Galit ShmueliAbstract:Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about quantifiable Consumer Surplus levels in such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment that involves real bidders participating in real auctions, and voting with real dollars, we collect and examine a unique data set to estimate Consumer Surplus in eBay auctions. The estimation procedure relies mainly on knowing the highest bid, which is not disclosed by eBay but is available to us from our experiment. At the outset we assume a private value second-price sealed-bid auction setting, as well as a lack of alternative buying options within or outside eBay. Our analysis, based on a sample of 4,514 eBay auctions, indicates that Consumers extract a median Surplus of at least $4 per eBay auction. This estimate is unbiased under the above assumptions; otherwise it is a lower bound. The Surplus distribution is highly skewed given the diverse nature of the data. We find that eBay's auctions generat...
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Consumer Surplus in online auctions
Social Science Research Network, 2005Co-Authors: Ravi Bapna, Wolfgang Jank, Galit ShmueliAbstract:Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about quantifiable Consumer Surplus levels in such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment that involves real bidders participating in real auctions, and voting with real dollars, we collect and examine a unique dataset to empirically quantify and understand determinants of Consumer Surplus in eBay auctions. The estimation procedure for private value auctions relies mainly on knowing the highest bid, which is not disclosed by eBay, but is available to us from our experiment. For common value auctions, where bidders bid strategically to avoid winner's curse, we develop an estimation procedure that infers the bidders' signals from their bids, and subsequently infers the item's common value and resulting Surplus, from the signals. Our analysis, based on a sample of 4514 eBay auctions, indicates that the average Surplus level per eBay auction is $15.59, which roughly translates to $6.5 billion in accrued Consumer Surplus for the year 2003 alone. We find that Consumer Surplus is significantly different across currencies and item categories, negatively influenced by seller experience, auction duration and competition, and positively influenced by bidder experience, bidder aggressiveness and item price.
Paul Klemperer - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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regulated prices rent seeking and Consumer Surplus
Economics Papers, 2012Co-Authors: Jeremy Bulow, Paul KlempererAbstract:Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone ensures that a price control always reduces Consumer Surplus in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if supply is more elastic than demand; or with log-convex demand (e.g., constantelasticity) even if supply is inelastic. The same results apply whether rationed goods are allocated by costless lottery, or whether costly rent-seeking and/or partial decontrol mitigates the inefficiency. Our analysis exploits the observation that in any market, Consumer Surplus equals the area between the demand curve and the industry marginal revenue curve.
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price controls and Consumer Surplus
Economics Papers, 2011Co-Authors: Jeremy Bulow, Paul KlempererAbstract:The condition for when a price control increases Consumer welfare in perfect competition is tighter than often realised. When demand is linear, a small restriction on price only increases Consumer Surplus if the elasticity of demand exceeds the elasticity of supply; with log-linear or constant-elasticity, demand Consumers are always hurt by price controls. The results are best understood - and can be related to monopoly-theory results - using the fact that Consumer Surplus equals the area between the demand curve and the industry marginal-revenue curve.
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price controls and Consumer Surplus
Research Papers, 2011Co-Authors: Jeremy Bulow, Paul KlempererAbstract:Price controls lead to misallocation of goods and encourage rent-seeking. The misallocation effect alone is enough to ensure that Consumer Surplus is always reduced by a price control in an otherwise-competitive market with convex demand if supply is more elastic than demand; or when demand is log-convex (e.g., constant-elasticity) even if supply is inelastic. The same results apply both when rationed goods are allocated by costless lottery among interested Consumers, and when costly rent-seeking and/or partial de-control mitigates the allocative inefficiency. The results are best understood using the fact that in any market, Consumer Surplus equals the area between the demand curve and the industry marginal revenue curve.
Ravi Bapna - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Consumer Surplus in online auctions
Information Systems Research, 2008Co-Authors: Ravi Bapna, Wolfgang Jank, Galit ShmueliAbstract:Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about quantifiable Consumer Surplus levels in such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment that involves real bidders participating in real auctions, and voting with real dollars, we collect and examine a unique data set to estimate Consumer Surplus in eBay auctions. The estimation procedure relies mainly on knowing the highest bid, which is not disclosed by eBay but is available to us from our experiment. At the outset we assume a private value second-price sealed-bid auction setting, as well as a lack of alternative buying options within or outside eBay. Our analysis, based on a sample of 4,514 eBay auctions, indicates that Consumers extract a median Surplus of at least $4 per eBay auction. This estimate is unbiased under the above assumptions; otherwise it is a lower bound. The Surplus distribution is highly skewed given the diverse nature of the data. We find that eBay's auctions generat...
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Consumer Surplus in online auctions
Social Science Research Network, 2005Co-Authors: Ravi Bapna, Wolfgang Jank, Galit ShmueliAbstract:Despite the growing research interest in Internet auctions, particularly those on eBay, little is known about quantifiable Consumer Surplus levels in such mechanisms. Using an ongoing novel field experiment that involves real bidders participating in real auctions, and voting with real dollars, we collect and examine a unique dataset to empirically quantify and understand determinants of Consumer Surplus in eBay auctions. The estimation procedure for private value auctions relies mainly on knowing the highest bid, which is not disclosed by eBay, but is available to us from our experiment. For common value auctions, where bidders bid strategically to avoid winner's curse, we develop an estimation procedure that infers the bidders' signals from their bids, and subsequently infers the item's common value and resulting Surplus, from the signals. Our analysis, based on a sample of 4514 eBay auctions, indicates that the average Surplus level per eBay auction is $15.59, which roughly translates to $6.5 billion in accrued Consumer Surplus for the year 2003 alone. We find that Consumer Surplus is significantly different across currencies and item categories, negatively influenced by seller experience, auction duration and competition, and positively influenced by bidder experience, bidder aggressiveness and item price.
Michael D Smith - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Consumer Surplus in the digital economy estimating the value of increased product variety at online booksellers
Management Science, 2003Co-Authors: Erik Brynjolfsson, Michael D SmithAbstract:We present a framework and empirical estimates that quantify the economic impact of increased product variety made available through electronic markets. While efficiency gains from increased competition significantly enhance Consumer Surplus, for instance, by leading to lower average selling prices, our present research shows that increased product variety made available through electronic markets can be a significantly larger source of Consumer Surplus gains.One reason for increased product variety on the Internet is the ability of online retailers to catalog, recommend, and provide a large number of products for sale. For example, the number of book titles available at Amazon.com is more than 23 times larger than the number of books on the shelves of a typical Barnes & Noble superstore, and 57 times greater than the number of books stocked in a typical large independent bookstore.Our analysis indicates that the increased product variety of online bookstores enhanced Consumer welfare by $731 million to $1.03 billion in the year 2000, which is between 7 and 10 times as large as the Consumer welfare gain from increased competition and lower prices in this market. There may also be large welfare gains in other SKU-intensive Consumer goods such as music, movies, Consumer electronics, and computer software and hardware.
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Consumer Surplus in the digital economy estimating the value of increased product variety at online booksellers
2003Co-Authors: Erik Brynjolfsson, Michael D SmithAbstract:We present a framework and empirical estimates that quantify the economic impact of increased product variety made available through electronic markets. While efficiency gains from increased competition significantly enhance Consumer Surplus, for instance by leading to lower average selling prices, our present research shows that increased product variety made available through electronic markets can be a significantly larger source of Consumer Surplus gains. One reason for increased product variety on the Internet is the ability of online retailers to catalog, recommend and provide a large number of products for sale. For example, the number of book titles available at Amazon.com is over 23 times larger than the number of books on the shelves of a typical Barnes & Noble superstore and 57 times greater than the number of books stocked in a typical large independent bookstore. Our analysis indicates that the increased product variety of online bookstores enhanced Consumer welfare by $731 million to $1.03 billion in the year 2000, which is between seven to ten times as large as the Consumer welfare gain from increased competition and lower prices in this market. There may also be large welfare gains in other SKU-intensive Consumer goods such as music, movies, Consumer electronics, and computer software and hardware.
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Consumer Surplus in the digital economy estimating the value of increased product variety at online booksellers
2003Co-Authors: Erik Brynjolfsson, Michael D SmithAbstract:We present a framework and empirical estimates that quantify the economic impact of increased product variety made available through electronic markets. While efficiency gains from increased competition significantly enhance Consumer Surplus, for instance by leading to lower average selling prices, our present research shows that increased product variety made available through electronic markets can be a significantly larger source of Consumer Surplus gains. One reason for increased product variety on the Internet is the ability of online retailers to provide a large number of products for sale. For example, the number of book titles available at Amazon.com is over 23 times larger than the number of books on the shelves of a typical Barnes & Noble superstore and 57 times greater than the number of books stocked in a typical large independent bookstore. Our analysis indicates that the increased product variety of online bookstores enhanced Consumer welfare by $731 million to $1.03 billion in the year 2000, which is at least five times as large as the Consumer welfare gain from increased competition and lower prices in this market. There may also be large welfare gains in other SKU-intensive Consumer goods such as music, movies, Consumer electronics, and computer software and hardware
Luciano Fanti - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Interlocking cross-ownership in a unionised duopoly: when social welfare benefits from “more collusion”
Journal of Economics, 2016Co-Authors: Luciano FantiAbstract:The present study analyses the effects of two-sided cross-ownership structures in a Cournot duopoly with firm-specific monopolistic unions. Since such mutual cross-participations imply a lower degree of competition, the conventional wisdom is that Consumer Surplus and social welfare, despite the increase in industry profits, are harmed. By contrast, when the labour market is unionised, we show the counterintuitive result that both Consumer Surplus and social welfare increase with the share of mutual cross-participation. Interestingly, this occurs not only when unions are wage-aggressive but even if they are fairly “risk-averse”. Therefore, a rather paradoxical conclusion—which may have anti-trust policy implications—is that the interlocking cross-ownership ensuring the highest profit (i.e. the “most” collusive mutual cross-participation) may be socially preferred when there are unions in oligopoly industries. Finally, it is shown that, even though details change, the results also hold qualitatively under differentiated products, price competition and triopoly.
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welfare effects of cross ownership in a unionised duopoly
2011Co-Authors: Luciano FantiAbstract:The present study analyses the effects of an increase in the share of crossownership in a Cournot duopoly with firm-specific monopolistic unions. Since the cross-participation at ownership level implies a lower degree of competition, then in a duopoly without unions, as expected, Consumer Surplus and social welfare, despite the increase in the industry profits, reduces when cross-participation increases. By contrast, when the labour market is unionised, we show the counterintuitive result, that despite the degree of competition is reduced by cross-ownership, both Consumer Surplus and social welfare increase with the share of cross-participation. This always occurs provided that unions are sufficiently wage-oriented. Therefore, the policy implication is that, when wage-interested unions are in existence in oligopoly industries, a rise in cross-participation - i.e., a lower degree of competition - is socially preferred. Moreover, all agents (firm's owner, workers and Consumers) agree for the highest possible level of cross-participation.