In 1996, the promulgation of the amended Telecommunications Act initiated a series of liberalization in telecommunication industry. From 1998 to 2000, Taiwan had become the most rapid growth area around the world with 130% compound annual growth rate and had marked a milestone with more than 80% of penetration by the end of 2000. This study focuses on the pricing plans offered by the main operators, CHT, TCC and FET, to analyze the pricing strategies and the competition scenarios with one another. In this study, we, first, gather the pricing plans of the operators and then review the history of the price adjustment. At last, we compare the pricing plans across the boundary of the operators. From the history of the price adjustment and the market evolution, we realize that the new subscribers encouraged by low prices are mostly low in airtime usages. The operators discriminates these low airtime users more in prices under the consideration of market competition and profit gaining. From reviewing the pricing plans of the operators respectively, we find the existence of ¡§redundant¡¨ pricing plans, which might bring the operators extra income. From comparison of the pricing plans offered by the three main operators, we conclude the three players try to lower the competition strength by charging high in different segments.

In this dissertation, I investigate hub carriers' competitive advantage in directional markets within their hub and spoke networks. In the first chapter, I examine whether the competitive advantage of hub carriers in attracting hub-to-spoke passengers relative to spoke-to-hub passengers affects rivals' entry decisions in a symmetric way. The hub carrier advantage in attracting passengers at its concentrated hub airport creates an environment in which variation in the composition of demand in hub-to-spoke markets affects entry in a profoundly different way than demand variation in spoke-to-hub markets. In the second chapter, I examine hub carrier fares and price-cost margins in hub and spoke airport pairs. Exploiting variation across airport-pairs, I find that an increase in the proportion of business travelers in hub-to-spoke markets increases fares in these markets, while an increase in the proportion of business travelers in spoke-to-hub markets decreases fares. This result is consistent with the structural asymmetries found in the first chapter. However, the source of these concentration advantages remains ambiguous. These advantages could be due to cost benefits, demand effects, or market power. Exploiting the variation between hub-to-spoke and spoke-to-hub markets within airport pairs isolates the market power effect on fares. I find that difference in hub carrier airport shares explains most of the variation in its hub-to-spoke and spoke-to-hub price-cost margins. Unobserved quality and cost heterogeneity do not bias the result. In the final chapter we look at the relationship between market power and price discrimination. In the presence of price discrimination, at least one price does not equal marginal cost. Therefore, if price discrimination exists, there must be market power. While this logic is sound, it has led many policymakers to believe that price discrimination and market power are positively correlated. We present a model where measured price-discrimination can be low while market power is high and price discrimination can be high while market power is low, thus demonstrating that there is no theoretical connection between the strength of price discrimination and that of market power. We then present new evidence that price discrimination is negatively correlated with market power in the US airlines industry. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1969. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 382-394).

The present research identified transaction costs in the mining sector in South Africa and provided means for mitigation. A review, discussion and evaluation of theories related to transaction costs such as vertical integration, outsourcing, price, long and short terms contracts was undertaken under literature review. A qualitative study, with two research questions, on eight companies of which four precious metals and minerals, two metallic minerals and two non-metallic minerals, was performed and provided among other results: • Cost of doing business in South Africa is high. • Site specificity and physical-asset specificity are the most influential specialised investments in the mining sector. • Long term contracts are the most appropriate to mitigate transaction costs. • Costly bargaining is the most important implication for all specialised investments. • Exchange rates, Mining Charter, BEE, legislation, taxes, royalties, fuel and electricity increases are cited as reasons for high transaction costs. • The small sample is a big concern as it does not allow generalising the results to over all mining companies. The South Africa’s government, as a regulator and a major stakeholder should revisit the mining charter and therefore the B-BBEE act as this clearly appeared to be a barrier to the development of mining companies. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

Thesis advisor: Michael Grubb / This dissertation consists of two chapters on the industrial organization of mortgage markets in the United States.In the first chapter, titled “Consumer Search Costs in U.S. Mortgage Markets”, I focus on estimating the distribution of consumer search costs in the market for government-backed mortgages in the US during the period from September 2013 to March 2015. I adapt the Hortaçsu and Syverson (2004) search model to mortgage markets. I estimate the distribution of consumer search costs in each U.S. state using recent data on government-insured mortgages. I find that estimated search costs are large; a median borrower would face a search cost equivalent to about $40 in monthly repayment. At the state-level, search cost magnitude is related positively to household income and age and negatively to years of education. I solve counterfactual scenarios in order to study the relationship between search costs and welfare. Compared to the full information scenario, the presence of costly consumer search decreases social welfare by about $600 in monthly repayment per borrower. This decrease in welfare occurs because under costly search borrowers are matched with lower quality lenders and spend resources on searching. At the national level, this decrease corresponds to approximately $35 million per-month. Reductions in search costs would raise social welfare monotonically. A 10% reduction in search cost may raise social welfare by as much as $130 per borrower per month. These findings support recent policies that aim to reduce search costs of mortgage borrowers. In the second chapter, titled “Price Discrimination in U.S. Mortgage Markets”, I examine the existence of price discrimination generated by costly consumer search in the market for mortgages. I develop a stylized model of consumer search in mortgage markets where firms charge optimal prices that depend on borrowers' search cost level. The model produces testable restrictions on the conditional quantile function of observed transacted rates. Using the data on insured Federal Housing Agency loans where price variation is not driven by default risk, I run a quantile regression of transacted interest rates on a set of loan observables, including borrower's credit score, original principal balance, and loan-to-value ratio, among others. I find that predictions of the theoretical model are satisfied for all loan observables under consideration, and price discrimination created by costly consumer search is likely to exist in U.S. mortgage markets. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Economics.

This thesis is composed of three essays. The first essay studies price setting behavior by sales agents of an electrical wholesale company following a change in their compensation contract. Originally, agents received a fixed share of the revenues from their sales. Under the new scheme, commission rates increase with the price-cost margin of the sale. The reform was enacted at different times in different stores, enabling measurement of its impact by difference-in-differences. Commissions on 95% of goods increase but agents do not raise prices on all these products. Despite the stronger financial incentives, the price of 18% of goods decreases and increases for the rest, suggesting agents reallocate effort among products. The second essay explores the importance of employee-customer relationships as an incentive and price discriminating tool. The model assumes that customers differ in their valuations and in their probability of returning (q). The distribution of valuations and q are known, and in each interaction the sales agent exerts effort to learn the customer’s valuation. The agent earns a commission based on the client’s payment and has full pricing flexibility. The two main insights are that, when the valuation is unknown, effort is increasing in q and the effect of a commission raise has an inverted-U relation with customers’ probability of returning. Prices should be increasing in effort. Using administrative data from an electrical company, I show evidence supporting the theoretical insights. The third essay analyses the determinants of teachers’ occupational choice and how changes in financial incentives modify individuals’ occupation choices. Among college graduates, teachers have both low average Armed Forces Qualification Test scores (AFQT) and high average risk aversion. Using a dynamic optimization model with unobserved heterogeneity, we find that were it possible to make teacher compensation mimic the return to skills and riskiness of the non-teaching sector, overall compensation in teaching would increase. Moreover, such a shift would substantially reduce the utility of many current teachers, making the process of reform challenging. Importantly, the results of policy exercises are very sensitive to the degree of heterogeneity included in the model.

This thesis consists of three closely connected pieces of work and an enhanced version of my M.Phil. thesis. The first three substantive chapters analyse vertical contracting in input markets under the exercise of differential buyer power. Chapters 2 and 3 consider the case of a supplier selling its output via a supermarket that offers captive demand (due to customers who anyway make a trip for their weekly shopping), which its rival, a local store is not able to offer. It is shown that the supermarket can negotiate an input price lower than the local store's only if its advantage translates into sufficient bargaining strength in setting contracts. The existence of a waterbed effect, the implications of a partially covered market, a nonlinear pricing structure and welfare implications of a ban in discrimination are also explored. Chapter 4 modifies the standard model where size determines buyer power to show that if quantities need to be decided in advance, an increase in a retailer's size is always welfare improving. For the presence of waterbed effects, we propose a novel insight that runs across different classes of models: following a discount to one retailer, the supplier faces two competing incentives - it wants to extract profits from the rival retailer but it also wants to transfer sales towards it. The waterbed effect is shown to be present only if the discount to the retailer is small, so incentives for profit extraction outweigh those for transferring business. Finally chapter 5 studies a firm's strategic incentive to outsource when its product displays network effects. It shows that a firm would choose to increase its observable marginal cost to make its competitor less aggressive and thereby increase its own probability of winning competition for the market. This is robust to small levels of uncertainty.

In the present dissertation, we study tax competitions for foreign direct investment, which includes the study of greenfield investment with the firm's ownership problem and the cross-border merger and acquisition (M\&A). It sheds light on the literature of public finance, international economics, and industrial organization. In chapter 1, we develop an open economy model with two segmented countries and one monopoly firm which registered in one of the countries. Our results show that when there is an exogenous transportation cost when exporting, the market size plays an important role in tax competition, however, when there is an endogenous tariff determined optimally by each country, the market size does not matter in the tax competition. Chapter 2 and 3 study the tax competition for a post-cross-border merger and acquisition firm, which the firm has three location options, located in either of the countries or both. We found that when the governments have two tax instruments, the lump-sum tax and tariff, the market size and price policy play an important role in tax competition. Moreover, when the governments utilize the lump-sum tax as the only instrument for tax competition, both the firm and countries will be better off when the firm keeps both plants.

Tillämpningen av dynamisk prissättning har förenklats i och med digitaliseringens framväxt. Med den ökade tillgången till kunddata kan företag idag kartlägga kundernas köpbeteende och genom algoritmer anpassa priserna därefter. Identiska varor och tjänster kan på så sätt prissättas annorlunda. För företaget utgör denna prissättning en möjlighet till ökad lönsamhet, men ur ett kundperspektiv kan detta tänkas skapa känslor av orättvisa och lurendrejeri. Samtidigt har det visat sig vara desto viktigare i en digital miljö att se till kundnöjdhet, eftersom det finns en högre transparens och kunderna har lägre engagemang och lojalitet. Det kan därför ifrågasättas om ett företag i längden tjänar på att använda sig av dynamisk prissättning om den skadar relationen till kunden. Syftet med denna studie är således att undersöka kundattityd kopplat till dynamisk prissättning. För att undersöka kundattityd baseras studien på en modell med komponenterna kundvärde, kundnöjdhet, kvalitet, kundlojalitet, förtroende och rättvisa. Studiens analys grundar sig på empirisk data som samlats in genom virtuella fokusgruppsdiskussioner. Dataunderlaget utgörs av fem fokusgruppsdiskussioner, med totalt 31 deltagare. Studien visar att kundernas attityd till företaget påverkas negativt av dynamisk prissättning. Dock framhäver studien att kundvärdet skapas i andra kvaliteter än pris. Trots en initial negativ inställning påvisas att det finns en viss grad av kundanpassning och utveckling av köpstrategier.