Federico Ciliberto

Does Multimarket Contact Facilitate Tacit Collusion? Inference on Conduct Parameters in the Airline Industry

We show that multimarket contact facilitates tacit collusion in the US airline industry using two complementary approaches. First, we show that the more extensive is the overlap in the markets that the two firms serve, i) the more firms internalize the effect of their pricing decisions on the profit of their competitors by reducing the discrepancy in their prices, and ii) the greater the rigidity of prices over time. Next, we develop a flexible model of oligopolistic behavior, where conduct parameters are modeled as functions of multimarket contact. We find i) carriers with little multimarket contact do not cooperate in setting fares, while carriers serving many markets simultaneously sustain almost perfect coordination; ii) cross-price elasticities play a crucial role in determining the impact of multimarket contact on collusive behavior and equilibrium fares; iii) marginal changes in multimarket contact matter only at low or moderate levels of contact; iv) assuming that firms behave as Bertrand-Nash competitors leads to biased estimates of marginal costs.

Does Organizational Form Affect Investment Decisions

I investigate whether organizational changes affect investment decisions using evidence from the hospital industry in the United States. During the 1990s, hospitals and physicians have reorganized the way they trade with each other, vertically consolidating the provision of healthcare services. I provide empirical evidence that hospitals adopting the new organizational forms add more healthcare services over time than hospitals that are independent of their physicians. I also find that when the average percentage of county population covered by each HMO increases, the differences in investment behavior between vertically consolidated and independent hospitals become larger.

Genetically engineered crops and pesticide use in U.S. maize and soybeans

The impact on pesticide use of genetically engineered maize and soybean varieties has changed over time. The widespread adoption of genetically engineered (GE) crops has clearly led to changes in pesticide use, but the nature and extent of these impacts remain open questions. We study this issue with a unique, large, and representative sample of plot-level choices made by U.S. maize and soybean farmers from 1998 to 2011. On average, adopters of GE glyphosate-tolerant (GT) soybeans used 28% (0.30 kg/ha) more herbicide than nonadopters, adopters of GT maize used 1.2% (0.03 kg/ha) less herbicide than nonadopters, and adopters of GE insect-resistant (IR) maize used 11.2% (0.013 kg/ha) less insecticide than nonadopters. When pesticides are weighted by the environmental impact quotient, however, we find that (relative to nonadopters) GE adopters used about the same amount of soybean herbicides, 9.8% less of maize herbicides, and 10.4% less of maize insecticides. In addition, the results indicate that the difference in pesticide use between GE and non-GE adopters has changed significantly over time. For both soybean and maize, GT adopters used increasingly more herbicides relative to nonadopters, whereas adopters of IR maize used increasingly less insecticides. The estimated pattern of change in herbicide use over time is consistent with the emergence of glyphosate weed resistance.

Information Content of Advertising: Empirical Evidence from the OTC Analgesic Industry

We develop an empirical study of the information–persuasion trade-off in advertising using data on the information content of ads, which we measure with the number of information cues in ads within an entire industry. The data are from video files of all advertisements in the OTC analgesics industry from 2001 to 2005. We propose a simple theoretical framework to motivate an ordered probit model of information content. We find that stronger vertical differentiation is positively associated with the delivery of more product information in a brands advertisements: brands with higher levels of quality include more information cues. Next, comparative advertisements contain significantly more product information than self-promotional advertisements. Finally, brands with larger market shares and brands competing against generic substitutes with large market shares use ads that have less information content.

Network Structure and Consolidation in the U.S. Airline Industry, 1990-2015

We study the effect of consolidation on airline network connectivity using three measures of centrality from graph theory: Degree, Closeness, and Betweenness. Changes in these measures from 1990 to 2015 imply: i) the average airport services a greater proportion of possible routes, ii) the average origin airport is fewer stops away from any given destination, and iii) the average hub is less often along the shortest route between two other airports. Yet, we find the trend toward greater connectivity in the national network structure is largely unaffected by consolidation, in the form of mergers and codeshare agreements, during this period.

Two Screening Tests for Tacit Collusion: Evidence from the Airline Industry

Abstract We formulate two empirical tests for collusive behavior based on the theoretical insights of Werden and Froeb (1994) and Athey, Bagwell, and Sanchirico (2004). The first predicts that colluding firms will reduce pair-wise differences in prices within a market if demand satisfies certain properties. The second predicts that colluding firms will sacrifice efficiency in production by increasing price rigidity to avoid informational costs. Using panel data from the US airline industry and fixed-effects estimation, we find that greater multimarket contact between carriers leads to pricing patterns consistent with both theoretical predictions, while code-share agreements are consistent with the second prediction.

Multiple Equilibria and Deterrence in Airline Markets

We use data from the US airline industry to estimate a model of entry deterrence. We model the interaction among airlines as a repeated static game, where we allow for a very general form of heterogeneity. We consider a menu of three alternative games that describe the strategic interaction among airlines: simultaneous and sequential move games, and a sequential move game with deterrence investments. Following Bernheim [1984], deterrence investments include all investment that raises barriers to entry, and for which the incumbent must incur some investment costs. We show that the profits that incumbents can make in the sequential game, both with and without deterrence investments, are larger than those that they can make if the game is played simultaneously. Thus, we find that on average it is profitable for all firms to deter new entrants, with the exception of United Airlines. Remarkably, United Airlines was under bankruptcy protection during the period of analysis, suggesting that its deterrence investments were not credible. Overall, we find that the data is explained better by a model where firms make deterrence investments. Thus, we cannot reject the hypothesis that incumbents deter entrants in the airline industry.

Public Communication and Collusion in the Airline Industry

We investigate whether legacy U.S. airlines communicated via earnings calls to coordinate with other legacy airlines in offering fewer seats on competitive routes. To this end, we first use text analytics to build a novel dataset on communication among airlines about their capacity choices. Estimates from our preferred specification show that when all legacy airlines in a market discuss the concept of “capacity discipline,�? they reduce offered seats by 1.79%. We verify that this reduction materializes only when airlines communicate concurrently, and that it cannot be explained by other possibilities, including that airlines are simply announcing to investors their unilateral intentions to reduce capacity, and then following through on those announcements. Additional results from conditional-exogeneity tests and control function estimates confirm our interpretation.

Effects of Mergers and Divestitures on Airline Fares

U.S. antitrust authorities have increasingly forced merging companies to divest assets as a condition for merger approval, with the goal of creating a more competitive postmerger environment. This study examined the effectiveness of this government strategy in the context of the airline industry, in which forced divestitures have occurred in recent consolidations. The study used unique data on assets critical to airport facilities that were involved in the divestitures to document the reallocation of those assets to low-cost carriers. Estimates of the impact of the divestitures on airfares were then calculated. The results show that, at the affected airports, fares for merging carriers fell by 3% and fares for nonmerging carriers fell by 1% relative to airports at which no divestiture occurred. These results provide evidence that the divestiture strategy used by antitrust authorities is effective in this setting in mitigating market power.

Multiple Equilibria And Deterrence In Airline Markets

We use a longitudinal dataset from the US airline industry to estimate three different models for entry games with very general forms of heterogeneity between U.S. carriers in airline markets: A simultaneous game with complete information; and two sequential games with or without strategic entry deterrence. In a sequential game with entry deterrence, an incumbent decides whether to incur a cost to deter potential entrants. We show that the model with sequential games with strategic deterrence provides the best fit to the data. We conclude that the results reject the hypothesis of a static model and support the hypothesis of the existence of strategic entry deterrence.