This paper proves that the welfare of the first price auction in Bayes-Nash equilibrium is at least a .743-fraction of the welfare of the optimal mechanism assuming agents’ values are independently distributed. The previous best bound was 1 − 1/e ≈ .63, derived in Syrgkanis and Tardos (2013) using smoothness, the standard technique for reasoning about welfare of games in equilibrium. In the wor...

This paper revisits the traditional view that a low-price guarantee results in higher prices and facilitates collusion. I acquired accurate data on matching stores and their competitors to address the common criticism of the scant existing empirical literature that their results are highly dependent on getting the market de nitions right. Using station level data in the retail gasoline industry...

With the rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce, the Internet has become an important channel for consumers to purchase goods. Because online shopping has characteristics of virtual and remote presence, consumers take greater psychological risks while they purchase online and they will make more cautious purchasing decisions. So they build their confidence and reduce the perceived ris...

With the rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce, the Internet has become an important channel for consumers to purchase goods. Because online shopping has characteristics of virtual and remote presence, consumers take greater psychological risks while they purchase online and they will make more cautious purchasing decisions. So they build their confidence and reduce the perceived ris...

abstract in order to evaluation the effects of price policies (wheat guarantee price in each period and its price lag), environmental (planted area) and climatic (min and max average temperature, total annual precipitation, cold-day degree and hot-day degree) factors, we considered wheat yield in razavi-khorasan province (9 cities) for a 13-year statistical period (1371-72 to 1383-84). in this ...

The purpose of this study is to determine if an auction with high seller expertise and a refund guarantee can have a significant impact on consumers’ willing to transact with as well as the actual price premiums received by an online auction business in the context of a thin market. A controlled field experiment was conducted to examine bidders’ behaviors in the four online auction businesses o...

A common practice among large retailers is the low-price guarantee, rebating consumers if they find an identical product cheaper elsewhere. This provides consumers with some level of comfort in their purchase decision. A similar low-price guarantee is provided by numerous service industries that allow reservation of capacity, yet do not penalize the consumer for failure to keep that reservation...

Many businesses in a wide variety of fields have instituted low price guarantees as a competitive tactic. A low price guarantee is a promise by a business to match the prices of its competitors. This Note explores the competitive effect of low price guarantees and determines that their effect is ambiguous. The author then argues that even if the low price guarantees are anti-competitive, the an...

The paper deals with the competitive effects of price guarantees in a spatial duopoly where consumers can search for lower prices but have to incur hassle costs if they want to claim a price guarantee. It is shown that symmetric equilibria with and without price guarantees exist but price guarantees will have no effect on prices if search costs are low, hassle costs are high and the number of u...

This article investigates best-price clauses as a strategic device to facilitate collusion in a dynamic duopoly game. Best-price clauses guarantee rebates on the purchase price if a customer finds a better price after his purchase. Two different price clauses are distinguished: "most favored customer" and "meet or release." I examine the collusive potential of both clauses in a finite-horizon d...