Browsing by Subject "Wettbewerbsverhalten"

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Competitiveness at the country-sector level : new measures based on global value chains
(2018) Beißinger, Thomas; Marczak, Martyna
We propose the so-called domestic “embodied unit labor costs” (EULC) at the country-sector level as a new cost-related basis for measures of international competitiveness. EULC take into account that a sector’s labor costs constitute only a small share of its total cost which to a large extent consist of expenses for inter- mediate goods from other sectors. In line with a simple Leontief-type model, the proposed measure is constructed as a weighted average of unit labor costs of all do- mestic sectors contributing to the final goods of a specific sector. The contribution is expressed in value-added terms and takes global supply chains into account. We also show how EULC can be consistently calculated for sectoral aggregates such as the tradable goods sector. Based on EULC we propose the “embodied real effec- tive exchange rate” (EREER) at the country-sector level as a new competitiveness indicator where the relevance of trading partners is quantified by an appropriate value-added measure. The chosen value-added concept replaces gross exports tra- ditionally used as the weight basis in effective exchange rates. Using the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) we employ the proposed indicators to shed new light on changes in cost competitiveness at the sectoral level for Germany, and compare the empirical evidence with selected other euro area countries.
Unraveling the spreading pattern of collusively effectivecompetition clauses
(2022) Trost, Michael
Meanwhile, the Industrial Organization literature gives several reasons why retailers adopt competition clauses (CCs) such as price matching or price beating guarantees. The motivations underlying the CCs might affect their forms and spread. In this paper, we unravel the spreading pattern of CCs in markets where they are used as a device to facilitate tacit collusion. It turns out that in homogeneous markets with capacity-constrained retailers, the retailers with the largest capacities are most inclined to adopt CCs. Our finding is in line with results of earlier studies on the formation of price leadership, which suggest that the retailers with the largest capacities take on the leadership position. On the other side, we find that in some market instances, retailers have to resort to CCs of non-conventional forms (i.e., of forms uncommon in real commercial life) to induce the most robust collusion. However, it turns out that this peculiar finding can be resolved for markets with additional characteristics. For example, if there exist market dominant retailers or the residual market demand is specified by efficient rationing, the most resilient collusion can also be enforced by CCs of conventional forms.