strategic complements

We study behavior and equilibrium selection in experimental network games. We varytwo important factors: (a) actions are either strategic substitutes or strategic complements, and(b) subjects have either complete or incomplete information about the structure of a randomnetwork. Play conforms strongly to the theoretical predictions, providing an impressivebehavioral confirmation of the Galeotti, Goyal, Jackson, Vega-Redondo, and Yariv (2010)model. The degree of equilibrium play is striking, even with incomplete information. We findthat under complete information, subjects typically play the stochastically-stable (inefficient)equilibrium when the game involves strategic substitutes, but play the efficient one with strategiccomplements. Our results suggest that equilibrium multiplicity may not be a major concern.Subjects’ actions and realized outcomes under incomplete information depend strongly on boththe degree and the connectivity. When there are multiple equilibria, subjects begi...

We investigate how manufacturers' advertising competition, when advertising has a dynamic impact on the goodwill that affects market demand, interacts with the price competition in a manufacturer-retailer channel. Specifically, we examine the strategic choices made by manufacturers, the role of the retailer in exacerbating or mitigating competition among manufacturers, the total channel profit and how that is split among the different players. Using prices, sales, and advertising data in the laundry detergent category we find that advertising and pricing are strategic complements as manufacturer advertising increases the price elasticity of demand; advertising competition intensifies price competition but it also improves the profitability of manufacturers; the presence of retailers in the channel leads to increased advertising spending while mitigating the extent of price competition. Manufacturers can enjoy a higher profit from using retailers when they compete in both price and advertising. Finally, we show that the emergence of ecommerce, which enables manufacturers directly selling to end consumers, has asymmetric profit impacts on manufacturers, as brands with lower cost and lower brand goodwill are more benefited from ecommerce.

Equilibrium prices behave quite differently if consumers single-purchase (buy either Time Magazine or Newsweek) or if some consumers multi-purchase (buy both). Prices are strategic complements under single-purchase, and increase with magazine quality. In a multi-purchase regime prices are strategically independent because firms then act monopolistically by pricing the incremental benefit to marginal consumers. Furthermore, prices can decrease with magazine quality due to overlapping content. Higher preference heterogeneity increases prices and profits in equilibrium with single-purchase, but decreases them with multi-purchase. We determine when each regime holds, and present a detailed reaction function analysis which applies more generally to duopoly pricing.

In this paper we extend the standard approach of horizontal tax competition by endogenizing the timing of decisions made by the competing jurisdictions. Following the literature on the endogenous timing in duopoly games, we consider a pre-play stage, where jurisdictions commit themselves to move early or late, i.e. to fix their tax rate at a first or second stage. We

We construct an overlapping generations model in which parents vote on the tax rate that determines publicly provided education and offspring choose their effort in learning activities. The technology governing the accumulation of human capital allows these decisions to be strategic complements. In the presence of coordination failure, indeterminacy and, possibly, growth cycles emerge. In the absence of coordination failure, the economy moves along a uniquely determined balanced growth path. We argue that such structural differences can account for the negative correlation between volatility and growth.

The behavior of outside portfolio managers of large money-center banks as analyzed to date is silent. In a centralized loan portfolio construction with decentralized loan portfolio management, changes in the bank's degree of capital market imperfection have direct effects on the bank's interest margin through the centralized as well as the decentralized loan rate determinations. We use a two-stage model of option-based analysis to study how information asymmetry and optimal bank loan rates relate to one another. We find that the decentralized loan rate managed by the outside loan manager is positively related to the bank's degree of capital market imperfection. The centralized loan rate managed by the bank is positively related to its degree of capital market imperfection under strategic complements, but negatively under strategic substitutes.

A regulator offers a cooperation contract to two firms to develop a research project. The contract provides incentives to encourage skill-sharing and coordinate subsequent efforts. Innovators must get informational rents to disclose their privately known skills, which results in distorting R&D efforts with respect to the first-best level. When efforts are strategic complements, both efforts are distorted downwards. By contrast, when efforts are strategic substitutes, the effort of the firm with most valuable skills is distorted downwards (to decrease rents) and the effort of the other firm is distorted upwards (to compensate the previous efficiency loss).

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to provide an explanation for the success of deregulation implemented in the Japanese oil industry by investigating the economic norm in Japanese gasoline market, namely, how a firm expects its rivals to react when the firm changes its output decisions. Using the conjectural opponent's reaction, this article investigates whether the economic norm in Japanese gasoline market is strategic complements or strategic substitutes. It is found that the economic norm in the Japanese gasoline market over the period 1992 to 2003 is strategic complements, that is, 'Do it, since everyone else is doing it'. It is suggested that some of the fall in gasoline prices said to result from successful deregulation should really be attributed to the production expansion derived from this strategic complementarity.

We propose a model of network games with heterogeneity introduced by endowing players with types that generate preferences among their choices. We study two classes of games: strategic complements or substitutes in payoffs. The payoff function depends on the network structure, and we ask how does heterogeneity shape players' decision making, what is its effect on equilibria, conditions of stability, and welfare. Heterogeneity in players' type establishes the existence of thresholds which determine the Nash equilibrium ...

This paper examines the heterogeneous market in which economic agents of different information-processing abilities interact. In the theoretical framework, the market is composed of three different types of agents, " sophisticated " agents with rational expectations, " naive " agents with adaptive expectations, and Bayesian agents endowed with learning abilities. The behavior of these agents in the context of an important economic problem of nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated one-time negative monetary shock is examined. If sophisticated agents with their perfect foresight find it profitable to imitate the biased behavior of naive agents, then the interaction of agents exhibits strategic complementarity. Thus the naive agents will have a disproportionately large effect on sluggish price adjustment towards equilibrium. However, the introduction of Bayesian agents with learning abilities into the market will have a compensatory effect by mitigating the price rigidity. Since Bayesian learning is allowed in heterogeneous market, Bayesian agents that first start as naive will undergo a learning process to become sophisticated after a certain period. In conclusion, the proportion of naive agents decreases in favor of sophisticated agents as depicted in the simulation model. As a result, the price adaptation towards equilibrium is accellerated.