Market structure and market performance in e-commerce

Arbeitspapier

We investigate the effect of market structure on market performance in the market for consumer electronics. This research is novel, because we exploit product life cycle information to build an instrumental variable for the number of firms in a market, a variable which hitherto had to be treated as exogenous in comparable studies on seller-behavior in e-commerce. We combine data from Austria's largest online site for price comparisons with retail-data on whole sale prices provided by a major hardware producer for consumer electronics. We observe input prices of firms, and all their moves in the entry and the pricing game. Using this information for 80 digital cameras, we generate instrumental variables based on the shops' entry decisions in the past. We find that instrumenting is particularly important for estimating the effect of competition on the markup of the price-leader.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ZEW Discussion Papers ; No. 11-084 [rev.]

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms ; Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets ; Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce ; Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
• Subject: Retailing ; Product Life Cycle ; Market Structure ; Market Performance ; Markup ; Price Dispersion ; Unterhaltungselektronik ; Marktstruktur ; Produktlebenszyklus ; Fotohandel ; Online-Handel ; Mark-up Pricing ; Preisdifferenzierung ; Österreich

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Hackl, Franz ; Kummer, Michael E. ; Winter-Ebmer, Rudolf ; Zulehner, Christine
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW)
• (where): Mannheim
• (when): 2012

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/67507
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET