Hans Jarle Kind

Competing for Capital in a 'Lumpy' World

This paper uses a new economic geography model to analyze tax competition between two countries trying to attract internationally mobile capital. Each government may levy a source tax on capital and a lump sum tax on fixed labor. If industry is concentrated in one of the countries, the analysis finds that the host country will gain from setting its source tax on capital above that of the other country. In particular, the host may increase its welfare per capita by setting a positive source tax on capital and capture the positive externality that arise in the agglomeration. If industry is not concentrated, however, both countries will subsidize capital.

Competition for Viewers and Advertisers in a TV Oligopoly

Abstract This study considers a model of a TV oligopoly where TV channels transmit advertising and viewers dislike such commercials. It is shown that advertisers make a lower profit the larger the number of TV channels. If TV channels are sufficiently close substitutes, there will be underprovision of advertising relative to social optimum. This study also finds that the more viewers dislike ads, the more likely it is that welfare is increasing in the number of advertising-financed TV channels. A publicly owned TV channel can partly correct market distortions, in some cases, by having a larger amount of advertising than private TV channels. It may even have advertising in cases where advertising is wasteful per se.

Media market concentration, advertising levels, and ad prices

Standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per-viewer ad prices. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed. We attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and that viewers single-home. Allowing for crowding in viewer attention spans for ads may reverse standard results, as does allowing viewers to multi-home.

Newspaper Differentiation and Investments in Journalism: The Role of Tax Policy

Many countries levy reduced-rate indirect taxes on newspapers, with proclaimed policy goals of stimulating investment in journalism and ensuring low newspaper prices. However, by taking into account the fact that the media industry operates in two-sided markets, we find the paradoxical result that the consequences of a low-tax regime might be quite the opposite; low investments and high prices. We also show that the low-tax regime tends to increase newspaper differentiation. If the advertising market is relatively small, the newspapers might invest too little in journalism and be too differentiated from a social point of view. In this case a tax increase will be welfare-enhancing.

The Broadband Access Market: Competition, Uniform Pricing and Geographical Coverage

In this paper we analyze the market for broadband access. A key feature of this market is that it is considerably more expensive to connect consumers in rural locations than in urban locations. We show that while competition increases welfare compared to monopoly when prices are free to differ across locations, the opposite may be true if there is a requirement of uniform pricing across locations. Furthermore, we show that given uniform pricing, the regulator may increase consumer surplus as well as profit by requiring a higher regional coverage than the market outcome.

Access Pricing, Quality Degradation, and Foreclosure in the Internet

Access to both a local and a global network is needed in order to get complete connection to the Internet. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between those two networks and how it affects the domestic public policy towards a domestic provider of local access. We find that a cost-oriented regulation is detrimental to domestic welfare, because it shifts profit to the foreign provider of global access. The optimal policy is that the regulator commits itself to set an access price above costs, possibly the same price as in an unregulated market economy. A regulation of the global access price has a non-monotonic effect on domestic welfare, and there is a potential conflict between international and domestic regulation policy.

Price-Dependent Profit Sharing as a Channel Coordination Device

We show how an upstream firm, by using a price-dependent profit-sharing rule, can prevent destructive competition between downstream firms that produce relatively close substitutes. With this rule, the upstream firm induces the retailers to behave as if demand has become less price elastic. As a result, competing downstream firms will maximize aggregate total channel profit. When downstream firms are better informed about demand conditions than the upstream firm, the same outcome cannot be achieved by vertical restraints such as resale price maintenance. Price-dependent profit sharing may also ensure that the downstream firms undertake efficient market expanding investments. The model is consistent with observations from the market for content commodities distributed by mobile networks.

On revenue and welfare dominance of ad valorem taxes in two-sided markets

A benchmark result in public economics is that it is possible to increase both tax revenue and welfare by making a monopoly subject to ad valorem taxes rather than unit taxes. We show that such revenue and welfare dominance does not hold in two-sided markets.

Do internet incumbents choose low interconnection quality

Abstract We analyze the interconnection incentives for two networks that differ with respect to the size of their installed bases. In the first part, we prove that the smaller firm may be harmed in competition for new customers if the installed base customers pay a high price. In the second part, we assume that the interconnection quality to customers in the installed bases is set before the interconnection quality to new customers. We show that both firms prefer perfect interconnection quality to new customers if the installed base interconnection quality is sufficiently high, and we discuss what policy implications this may have.

Competition for Advertisers and for Viewers in Media Markets

Standard models of advertising-financed media assume consumers patronize a single media platform, precluding effective competition for advertisers. Such competition ensues if consumers multi-home. The principle of incremental pricing implies that multi-homing consumers are less valuable to platforms. Then entry of new platforms decreases ad prices, while a merger increases them, and ad-financed platforms may suffer if a public broadcaster carries ads. Platforms may bias content against multi-homing consumers, especially if consumers highly value overlapping content and/or second impressions have low value.