Sílvia Ferreira Jorge

Limit pricing under third-degree price discrimination

This paper shows how a multimarket incumbent can use low pre-entry prices for entry deterrence. We consider an incumbent who operates in two independent markets and has private information about his production cost. In one of the markets, there is a potential entrant offering a differentiated product. The most reasonable perfect Bayesian equilibrium is either the least-cost separating equilibrium or the pooling equilibrium where both types of incumbents set the low-cost monopoly prices. This equilibrium may involve a downward distortion in the pre-entry prices of both markets. Our model has interesting implications for antitrust regulation as well as for international trade policy. First, predatory tests based on a single market are inadequate for a multimarket incumbent. Second, a lower price in a foreign market is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of entry deterrence in a foreign market.

Market power and integrated regional markets of electricity: a simulation of the MIBEL

We consider a partial equilibrium model where we study the integration of two oligopolistic markets that are not symmetric (in number of ?rms, in demand or market dimension). We present a simulation for the integration of the Iberian wholesale electricity market (MIBEL) and show how the exercise of market power will evolve with regional full integration. The simulation results show that, as expected, market power is lower after full integration. However, even after full integration, market power is still a feature of the market. There fore, the full bene?ts of liberalisation and integration are not seized by the consumers since wholesale prices persist to be higher than marginal costs.