We're Number 1: Price Wars for Market Share Leadership

Luis Cabral

No 9818, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: I examine the dynamics of oligopolies when firms derive subjective value from being the market leader. In equilibrium, prices alternate in tandem between high levels and occasional price wars, which take place when market shares are similar and market leadership is at stake. The stationary distribution of market shares is typically multi-modal, that is, much of the time there is a stable market leader. Even though shareholders do not value market leadership per se, a corporate culture that values market leadership may increase shareholder value. From a competition policy point of view, the paper implies that price regime change dynamics and parallel pricing are consistent with competitive behavior -- in fact, hyper-competitive behavior.

Keywords: Behavioral io; Dynamic oligopoly; Market shares; Ordinal rankings; Price wars (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L13 L21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9818 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: We’re Number 1: Price Wars for Market Share Leadership (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9818

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP9818

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().