Strategic inventories under limited commitment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Antoniou, Fabio; Fiocco, Raffaele
• 署名单位: University of Ioannina; Humboldt University of Berlin; University of Bergamo
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12292
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 695-729
• 关键词: intertemporal price-discrimination; good monopoly; BEHAVIOR; INVESTMENT; DYNAMICS; sales; COMPETITION; capacity; MODEL

摘要

In a dynamic storable good market where demand changes over time, we investigate the producer's strategic incentives to hold inventories in response to the possibility of buyer stockpiling. The literature on storable goods has demonstrated that buyer stockpiling in anticipation of higher future prices harms the producer's profitability, particularly when the producer cannot commit to future prices. We show that the producer's inventories act as a strategic device to mitigate the loss from the lack of commitment. Our results provide a rationale for the producer's inventory behavior that sheds new light on the well-documented empirical evidence about inventories.