Essays in Industrial Organization and Behavioral Economics

Essays in Industrial Organization and Behavioral Economics
Author: Ting-Hao Jordan Ou
Publisher:
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

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This dissertation is comprised of two essays at the intersection of Empirical Industrial Organization and Behavioral Economics. They explore how business decisions are more richly explained with additions in psychological insights commonly found among consumers. These behavioral biases can affect a firm's decision to participate and their supply in the market, ultimately impacting market competition, supply thickness, and equilibrium. In Chapter 1, I explore how retailers make entry and exit decisions in the context of an online marketplace. Using a rich panel of internal data from eBay on dedicated sellers, I analyze a feature of the platform requiring sellers to select among monthly contracts that differ in the listing fee schedules. I further exploit a regime change that introduced a monthly allowance of free listings of inventory, altering all contracts from a two-part tariff to a three-part tariff design. This design change was effective in attracting new users and sellers to the platform, encouraging experienced users to become high-volume sellers, and increasing total inventory listed in the marketplace. This is despite little changes in average costs of selling. I demonstrate that standard entry and exit models cannot explain this increase in supply and competition. Instead, I propose loss aversion as an additional factor impacting participation. Chapter 2 investigates how high-volume, experienced retailers value their products and make supply decisions. Using similar data from eBay and exploiting the same contract feature and policy change, I analyze both the sellers' contract choice decisions and the timing of product listings. By estimating a dynamic model of plan choice and listing decisions, I find that sellers have a limited learning period and hold biased beliefs on the option values of their products. Furthermore, they respond heterogeneously to dynamic incentives and future listing costs, leading to an uneven supply of products on the platform. Using the model estimates, I show that debiasing sellers would increase seller surplus by 6\% but decrease platform listing revenue by 26%. However, since many platforms generate the majority of revenue from percentage fees on the listings' values, they may prefer to pursue policies that increase total listings. By targeting specific sellers, such policies can increase aggregate listings on the platform by up to 4.8% at a loss of 5.5% in listing revenue.

Essays on Behavioral Economics

Essays on Behavioral Economics
Author: George Katona
Publisher: Ann Arbor, Mich. : Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Total Pages: 120
Release: 1980
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

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Essays in Behavioral Industrial Organization and Natural Resource Economics

Essays in Behavioral Industrial Organization and Natural Resource Economics
Author: Kiriti Kanjilal
Publisher:
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2018
Genre:
ISBN:

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This dissertation analyzes firms' side problems in economics using an industrial organization approach to provide analysis and policy tools.

The Economics of Choice, Change and Organization

The Economics of Choice, Change and Organization
Author: Mie Augier
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 488
Release: 2002
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

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This collection of essays was commissioned for this volume in honour of the ideas and work of the late Richard M. Cyert who made a seminal contribution to the fields of industrial organization and change. In keeping with the range and significance of his work, the essays in this volume examine the economics of decision making, uncertainty, information processing, learning, evolution and organizational structure. Topics covered include: behavioural and evolutionary theories of the firm; cognitive factors in organization and economic action; the place of rules in organizations; learning from experience and from the knowledge of others; selection in economic change; and the impact of information technology and the evolution of organizational forms. The collection emphasizes the adaptive nature of economic action and the links between econmies and studies of human information processing and action. It should be interesting reading for scholars with an interest in behavioural and adaptive economics, along with industrial organization.

Bounded Rationality and Industrial Organization

Bounded Rationality and Industrial Organization
Author: Ran Spiegler
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2011-02-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0199813426

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Conventional economic theory assumes that consumers are fully rational, that they have well-defined preferences and easily understand the market environment. Yet, in fact, consumers may have inconsistent, context-dependent preferences or simply not enough brain-power to evaluate and compare complicated products. Thus the standard model of consumer behavior-which depends on an ideal market in which consumers are boundlessly rational-is called into question. While behavioral economists have for some time confirmed and characterized these inconsistencies, the logical next step is to examine the implications they have in markets. Grounded in key observations in consumer psychology, Bounded Rationality and Industrial Organization develops non-standard models of "boundedly rational" consumer behavior and embeds them into familiar models of markets. It then rigorously analyses each model in the tradition of microeconomic theory, leading to a richer, more realistic picture of consumer behavior. Ran Spiegler analyses phenomena such as exploitative price plans in the credit market, complexity of financial products and other obfuscation practices, consumer antagonism to unexpected price increases, and the role of default options in consumer decision making. Spiegler unifies the relevant literature into three main strands: limited ability to anticipate and control future choices, limited ability to understand complex market environments, and sensitivity to reference points. Although the challenge of enriching the psychology of decision makers in economic models has been at the frontier of theoretical research in the last decade, there has been no graduate-level, theory-oriented textbook to cover developments in the last 10-15 years. Thus, Bounded Rationality and Industrial Organization offers a welcome and crucial new understanding of market behavior-it challenges conventional wisdom in ways that are interesting and economically significant, and which in the end effect the well-being of all market participants.

Essays in Behavioral Industrial Organization, Corruption, and Marketing

Essays in Behavioral Industrial Organization, Corruption, and Marketing
Author: Dominique Olié Lauga
Publisher:
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2007
Genre:
ISBN:

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(Cont.) In this case, a firm that conducts market research will always innovate on the attribute it discovers that consumers prefer, and expend more on R & D than a rival that has not conducted market research. With horizontal preferences, distinct segments exist-each cares about innovation on only one attribute-and firms are a priori uncertain how many consumers are in each segment. In this case, a firm that conducts market research may follow a 'niche' strategy and innovate to serve the smaller segment to avoid intense price competition for the larger segment. Consequently, a firm that conducts market research may invest less in R & D and earn lower profits post-launch than a rival that has forgone such research.