Germán Coloma

Bertrand Competition in Markets with Fixed Costs

This paper provides necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a pure strategy Bertrand equilibrium in a model of price competition with fixed costs. It unveils an interesting and unexplored relationship between Bertrand competition and natural monopoly. That relationship points out that the non-subadditivity of the cost function at the output level corresponding to the oligopoly break-even price, denoted by D(pL(n)), is sufficient to guarantee that the market sustains a (not necessarily symmetric) Bertrand equilibrium in pure strategies with two or more firms supplying at least D(pL(n)). Conversely, the existence of a pure strategy equilibrium ensures that the cost function is not subadditive at every output greater than or equal to D(pL(n)).

The Effect of the Repsol-YPF Merger on the Argentine Gasoline Market

This paper presents alternative models of oligopoly behaviorfor the Argentine gasoline market and applies parametric estimations to analyze the effect that the Repsol-YPFmerger had on that market. Using monthly data for the different provinces of Argentina during 1998–2000,we make an evaluation of that effect. After performing a series of nested and non-nested hypothesis tests, weconclude that we cannot reject the hypothesis that the market was a Cournot oligopoly before the merger,and after that it became one with a price leader (Repsol-YPF). This implies an efficiency loss estimatedin more than

Mergers and Acquisitions in Mixed-Oligopoly Markets

36 million per month.

Price Discrimination and Price Dispersion in the Argentine Gasoline Market

This paper develops an oligopoly model with firms that may potentially be state-owned or privately owned and solves it for different cases in which the number and ownership of those firms vary. The results are then compared in terms of total surplus and consumer surplus, and this comparison produces implications for the antitrust appraisal of possible mergers and acquisitions. It follows that certain types of mergers are unambiguously favorable or unfavorable from the point of view of their contribution to both total and consumer surplus, while others may be beneficial in one of those dimensions but harmful in the other dimension.

The existence of negative correlation between linguistic measures across languages

This paper analyses the extent of gasoline price differences among provinces in Argentina during the period 1998-2000, and tries to impute those differences to price discrimination and non-price discrimination causes. It also tries to measure the effects of those differences on quantities and welfare. We conclude that price discrimination exists but it is relatively irrelevant to explain most geographic price differences. We also find that, in this case, eliminating price discrimination would lead to ambiguous changes in welfare, but moving to a uniform price scheme (i.e., preventing all geographic price differences) will almost certainly reduce total surplus.

An economic analysis of horizontal property

Abstract This paper proposes a procedure to evaluate the possible existence of negative correlation between three language ratios (phonemes per syllable, syllables per word, and words per clause), based on a synergetic linguistics’ approach. It uses partial correlation coefficients and simultaneous-equation regressions, and the analysis is performed on data obtained from the fable “The North Wind and the Sun”, translated into 50 languages. After controlling for phenomena related to geographic and genetic factors, we end up with the conclusion that the three ratios are negatively correlated between themselves, and this can be seen as a signal of the possible existence of complexity trade-offs.

Estimation of Demand Systems Based on Elasticities of Substitution

Abstract Horizontal property is a common legal institution in many codified law countries that establishes property rights on apartment or office buildings among different owners. Applying a version of the Coase theorem, in this paper we analyze it as a solution to establish rights on assets that jointly yield services subject to individual and joint consumption (private and public goods). Under certain conditions, this institution seems to economize transaction and governance costs, especially in cases where the governance costs of a centralized condominium are relatively high and the number of economic agents involved (that is, the number of apartments of the building) is also high.

Towards a Synergetic Statistical Model of Language Phonology

This paper develops a model for demand-system estimations, whose coefficients are own-price Marshallian elasticities and elasticities of substitution between goods. The model satisfies the homogeneity, symmetry and, eventually, adding-up restrictions implied by consumer theory, and is primarily useful for the estimation of the demands of several goods of the same industry or group of products. The characteristics of the model are compared to other existing alternatives (logarithmic, translog, AIDS and QUAIDS demand systems). The model is finally applied to estimate the demands for several carbonated soft drinks in Argentina, and its results are presented, together with the ones obtained with the other estimation methods.

AN ECONOMETRIC METHOD TO DETECT THE SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LINGUISTIC VARIABLES

Abstract 11 I thank Reinhard Köhler, Mariano Fernández and two anonymous referees for their extremely useful comments and suggestions to a previous version of this article.This paper proposes a method to analyse linguistic data using simultaneous equation regressions, and applies that method to a database of 100 languages and four phonological variables (consonant inventory size, vowel inventory size, stress distinctiveness and tone distinctiveness). The proposed method is based on some principles of synergetic linguistics, since its equations can be derived from an optimization problem that assumes that the levels of the phonological variables are chosen to maximize decoding ease and to minimize production effort. It is also good to replicate the most significant correlation coefficients of the database, and to solve a puzzle concerning the sign of some of those coefficients. With the aid of this method, we build a linear statistical model of phonological structure, according to which consonants, vowels and tone are all negatively related to stress distinctiveness. This result can be related to some findings of the literature about quantitative phonological typology.

Equilibrios competitivos y de Bertrand, con y sin Diferenciación de Productos

Abstract This paper proposes a quantitative method, drawn from the field of economic statistics (also known as “econometrics”), to detect the social significance of certain linguistic variables. It uses leastsquare regression analysis to find the relationship between the income of the individuals from a population and several linguistic characteristics of those individuals. As a result, we obtain “hedonic prices”, that indicate whether those characteristics are associated with higher or lower levels of income, and we can also detect whether those prices are statistically significant. The method is illustrated with an example taken from Spanish phonetics