Equilibrium trade in automobile markets

Kenneth Gillingham, Fedor Iskhakov, Anders Munk-Nielsen, John Rust () and Bertel Schjerning

No 7650, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We introduce a computationally tractable dynamic equilibrium model of the automobile market where new and used cars of multiple types (e.g. makes/models) are traded by heterogeneous consumers. Prices and quantities are determined endogenously to equate supply and demand for all car types and vintages, along with the ages at which cars are scrapped. The model allows for transactions costs, taxes, flexible specifications of car characteristics, consumer preferences, and heterogeneity. We apply the model to two examples: a revenue-neutral replacement of the new vehicle registration tax with a higher fuel tax and a hypothetical “merger to monopoly” in an oligopolistic new car market. We show substantial gains in consumer welfare from the tax policy change, as well as important effects on government revenues, automobile prices, driving, fuel consumption and CO2 emissions, while the merger leads to substantial welfare losses.

Keywords: secondary markets; trade; consumer heterogeneity; transactions costs; dynamic programming; extreme value distribution; dynamic discrete choice; multinomial logit model; stationary equilibrium; Markov chains; invariant distributions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 D61 H21 H23 L90 Q40 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-dge, nep-ene, nep-ore and nep-tre
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Equilibrium Trade in Automobile Markets (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7650

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