Federico Etro

Stackelberg competition with endogenous entry

I characterise endogenous market structures where leaders have a first-mover advantage and entry is endogenous. Leaders are always more aggressive than the followers, independently from strategic substitutability or complementarity. Under quantity competition, leaders produce more than any follower and I determine the conditions for entry-deterrence (high substitutability and non-increasing marginal costs). Under price competition, leaders set lower prices than the followers (the opposite than with an exogenous number of firms). In contests, leaders invest more than each follower. In all these cases a leadership improves the allocation of resources compared to the Nash equilibrium with endogenous entry.

Endogenous Market Structures and Strategic Trade Policy

We characterize the optimal export promoting policies for international markets whose structure is endogenous. Contrary to the ambiguous results of strategic trade policy for markets with a fixed number of firms, it is always optimal to subsidize exports as long as entry is endogenous, under both competition in quantities and in prices. With homogenous goods the optimal export subsidy is a fraction 1/€ of the price, where € is the elasticity of demand, the exact opposite of the optimal export tax in the neoclassical trade theory. A similar argument can be applied to show the general optimality of R&D subsidies and of competitive devaluations to promote exports in foreign markets where entry is endogenous.

Monopolistic Competition when Income Matters

We study monopolistic competition with preferences over differentiated goods characterized by a separable indirect utility rather than a separable direct utility as in the Dixit-Stiglitz model, with the CES case as the only common ground. Examples include linear and log-linear direct demands. In equilibrium with free entry, an increase of the number of consumers is neutral on prices, but increases proportionally the number of firms, just creating pure gains from variety. Contrary to the Dixit-Stiglitz model, an increase in consumer income increases prices and more than proportionally the number of varieties if and only if the price elasticity of demand is increasing. We also discuss extensions to an outside good, heterogeneous consumers, heterogeneous firms a la Melitz and endogenous quality. Finally, we provide an application to international trade generating pricing to market in a generalized Krugman model.

Endogenous Market Structures and Innovation by Leaders: An Empirical Test

Simple models of competition for the market with endogenous entry show that, contrary to the Arrow view, an endogenous entry threat in a market induces the average firm to invest less in R&D and the incumbent leader to invest more. We test these predictions based on a unique dataset and survey for the German manufacturing sector (the Mannheim Innovation Panel). In line with our predictions, endogenous entry threats as perceived by the firms reduce R&D intensity for the average firm, but they increase it for an incumbent leader. These results hold after a number of robustness tests with instrumental variable regressions.

The Market for Paintings in Italy During the Seventeenth Century

We study the seventeenth-century market for figurative paintings in Italy analyzing original contracts between patrons and artists. We show that a number of supply and demand factors affected prices. We find a positive and concave relation between prices and size of paintings reflecting economies of scale. We show evidence of a positive relationship between prices and the number of figures depicted. Trade in paintings was sufficient to equalize prices between different destinations. Finally, we provide support for the Galenson hypothesis of a positive relation between age of experimental artists and quality as priced by the market.

Preferences, entry, and market structure

We provide a unified approach to imperfect (monopolistic, Bertrand, and Cournot) competition when preferences are symmetric over a finite but endogenous number of goods. Markups depend on the Morishima elasticity of substitution and on the number of varieties. The comparative statics of free-entry equilibria is examined, establishing the conditions for markup neutrality with respect to income, market size, and productivity. We compare endogenous and optimal market structures for several non-CES examples. With a generalized linear direct utility, the markup can be constant and optimal under monopolistic competition, and nonmonotonic in the number of firms under Bertrand or Cournot competition.

New-Keynesian Phillips Curve with Bertrand Competition and Endogenous Entry

We derive a New Keynesian Phillips curve under Calvo staggered pricing and endogenous market structures with Bertrand competition. Both strategic interactions and endogenous business creation strengthen the nominal rigidities. Price adjusters change their prices less when there are more direct competitors that do not adjust, which reduces the slope of the Phillips curve. Current and future firms entering in the markets decrease current inflation because they reduce markups and the welfare-based price index. Endogenous entry amplifies the impact of both monetary and supply shocks. We also characterize the optimal social planner allocation, that can be replicated with a labor subsidy and a dividend tax (both decreasing in the number of firms) and zero producer price inflation. The optimal Ramsey allocation implies zero inflation tax in steady state.

The Theory of Endogenous Market Structures

Most market structures are neither perfectly or monopolistically competitive: they are characterized by a few large firms that are engaged in strategic interactions in their production and investment decisions and whose number is endogenous. The theory of endogenous market structures analyzes markets in partial and general equilibrium where strategies affect entry and entry affects strategies, and exogenous primitive conditions on technology and preferences affect the equilibrium. We discuss applications to industrial organization, international trade, business cycle theory, international finance, growth and implications for welfare and for competition, trade, fiscal and monetary policy.

The Market for Paintings in Paris between Rococò and Romanticism

We analyze organization of auctions and bidding strategies with a unique dataset on Paris auctions between 700s and 800s. Prices reflect the objective features of the paintings and of the sale, and they reveal a substantial death effect, with upward jumps in the years after the death of the artists. Both the hedonic and repeated sale price indexes show a declining pattern for the relative price of paintings starting with the French Revolution. On this basis we analyze the emerging role and market power of art dealers and employ network theory to study whether they created rings to manipulate the outcome of the auctions for their profits. Dealers appear to have been divided into four main communities heavily trading between themselves and we find evidence of collusive behavior with lower hammer prices for buyers belonging to the same community of the dealers organizing the auction.

Leadership in Multi-sided Markets and Dominance in Online Advertising

Bringing scholars and policymakers to the frontiers of research and addressing the critical issues of the day, the book presents original important new theoretical and empirical results. The distinguished contributors include: P. Agrel, K. Alexander, J. Cremer, X. Dassiou, G. Deltas, F. Etro, L. Filistrucchi, P. Fotis, M. Gilli, J. Harrington Jr, T. Huertas, M. Ivaldi, B. Jullien, V. Marques, M. Peitz, Y. Spiegel, E. Tarrantino and G. Wood.