Competition in the presence of individual demand uncertainty

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Moeller, Marc; Watanabe, Makoto
• 署名单位: University of Bern; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Tinbergen Institute
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12127
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 273-292
• 关键词: advance-purchase discounts; states airline industry; price-discrimination; market power; dispersion; oligopoly; INFORMATION; monopoly

摘要

This article offers a tractable model of (oligopolistic) competition in differentiated product markets characterized by individual demand uncertainty. The main result shows that, in equilibrium, firms offer advance purchase discounts and that these discounts are larger than in the monopolistic benchmark. Competition reduces welfare by increasing the fraction of consumers who purchase in advance, that is, without (full) knowledge of their preferences.