Pricing and Pack Size Brand, Quantity, and Cost Considerations in Pricing Multipacks of Toothpaste
By Stephanie Wiehe
The US market for toothpaste, like many other goods, is shifting towards selling
in bulk. Multipacks of toothpaste require quantity discounts to incentivize consumers, making buying in bulk a great deal for the savings-minded toothpaste-shopper. It is more difficult to understand, however, producers’ willingness to sell multipacks of toothpaste, when margins are necessarily slimmer than single tubes due to quantity discounts. This paper explores the consumer’s decision in purchasing toothpaste as an interaction between savings on price and inventory considerations, like shopping and carrying costs. My model combines aspects of prior works on second degree price discrimination and quantity discounts with alterations to fit the intricacies of the market for toothpaste. The model’s predictions support the possibility of pack size as a tool for second degree price discrimination as shopping and carrying costs constitute two markets with different price elasticities of demand for single and multipacks of toothpaste. This work adds to the existing literature on storable goods and non-linear pricing and brings a new economics-based approach to a question faced by toothpaste producers.
Advisors: Professor Allan Collard-Wexler, | JEL Codes: L11; L42; D4
ICT Behavior at the Periphery: Exploring the Social Effect of the Digital Divide through Interest in Video Streaming
By Erik W. Hanson and Justin C. LoTurco
We investigate the factors that influence changes in consumer behavior with regard to video streaming. We focus our analysis on the effect of bandwidth impairment to explore a potential consequence of the digital divide. To measure the change in relative popularity of video streaming services, we use Google Trends data as a proxy. We then investigate whether broadband speed improvements in rural vs. urban regions affect the proxy differently. We find that increasing the broadband speeds in rural regions appears to stimulate greater interest in video streaming than equivalent speed increases in urban regions.
Advisors: Professor Michelle Connolly, Professor Grace Kim | JEL Codes: C33; J11; L96
Does Media Coverage of Sexual Assault Cases Cause Victims to Go to the Police? Evidence from FBI Data and Google Trends
By Harry Elworthy
This paper investigates the effect that national news coverage of prominent sexual assaults has on the reporting decisions of sexual assault victims. Estimates are based on time series data of reports made to police stations in the US from 2008 to 2016 and Google Trends data of search volume, along with an identification strategy that uses a number of individual high profile sexual assault allegations and related events as instruments. By removing assaults that occurred on the day that they were reported, I estimate the effect of coverage only on the reporting of assaults, and not on assaults themselves. A significant positive effect of news coverage on sexual assault reporting is found using several specifications. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that there were between 31 and 121 additional reports of sexual assault for each of the 38 high profile events captured. No evidence is found to suggest that these additional reports of sexual assault have different arrest rates to other reports, indicating that there are not a significant number of false reports. This paper adds to current literature on the sexual assault reporting decision by considering the effect of news coverage and by using different methods of inference to previous papers.
Advisor: Professor Patrick Bayer | JEL Codes: D91, J16, K42, L86, Z13
Investigating a Case of Alleged Collusion in Michigan Public Oil and Gas Lease Auctions
By Lucas Do
The state of Michigan administers oil and gas lease auctions semiannually through the Department of Natural Resources. In June 2012, the international news outlet Reuters published allegations of bid-rigging following the Department’s May 2010 auction. This paper empirically investigates the validity of Reuters’ allegations by analyzing auction bid sheets from 2008 to 2018 as well as other data reflecting market conditions over time. To this end, I first formulate a benchmark structural model of bidders’ valuations and estimate it with auction data from a period during which I assume no collusion occurred. Then, I extend the benchmark model by endogenizing bidders’ decision to collude. Using the extended model and the estimated benchmark parameters, I apply the simulated method of moments to solve for the collusive probability that “best” explains the observed bids during the alleged period of collusion. After discovering strong evidence for bid-rigging, I run counterfactual simulations to estimate the revenue damage caused to the state of Michigan by this non-competitive bidding behavior. I find that the hypothetical revenue damage, summed over the entire alleged collusive period, totals over $450 million. However, although these findings lend support to Reuters’ allegations and are contrary to the Department of Justice’s conclusion in 2014 after they had probed the case, they should be approached only with caution, given the limitations of the available data on the potential bidders.
Advisors: Professor James Roberts, Professor Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: L4, D44, L71
The Impact of Collegiate Athletic Success and Scandals on Admissions Applications
By William J. Battle-McDonald
This paper examines how the quantity and quality of admissions applications to Division 1 colleges and universities were affected by two non-academic factors: (1) performance of a school’s men’s basketball and football teams; and (2) scandals associated with these athletic programs. Admissions data from 2001 – 2017 were compared to team performance during their football and basketball seasons in order to understand how these non-academic factors contribute to an individual’s decisions to apply for admission. A multivariate linear regression model with school and year fixed effects supported the hypothesis that athletic success positively affects the quantity of applications, increasing them by up to 3% in basketball and 11% in football in the following application period. Seasonal football success was also shown to have negative impacts on the distribution of standardized testing scores of future applicant classes, however these scores were shown to increase when a team played their best season in five or more years. Additional analysis of the effects of athletic program scandals reveals a significant negative effect on the number of applications received, although a deep dive into a few of the most prominent scandals suggests that the benefits associated with violating NCAA rules may, under the right circumstances, be well worth the risk.
Advisor: Professor James Roberts | JEL Codes: I23, J24, L82, L83, Z2
Evaluation of the Impact of New Rules in FCC’s Spectrum Incentive Auction
By Elizabeth Lim, Akshaya Trivedi and Frances Mitchell
On March 29, 2016, the FCC initiated its first ever two-sided spectrum auction. The auction closed approximately one year later, having repurposed a total of 84 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum. The “Incentive Auction” included three primary components: (1) a reverse auction where broadcasters bid on the price at which they would voluntarily relinquish their current spectrum usage rights, (2) a forward ascending clock auction for flexible use wireless licenses which determined the winning bids for licenses within a given geographic region, and (3) an assignment phase, where winning bidders from the forward auction participated in single-bid, second price sealed auctions to determine the exact frequencies individual licenses would be assigned within that geographic region. The reverse auction and the forward auction together constituted a “stage.” To guarantee that sufficient MHz were cleared, the auction included a “final stage rule” which, if not met, triggered a clearing of the previous stage and the start of a new stage. This rule led to a total of four stages taking place in the Incentive Auction before the final assignment phase took place. Even at first glance, the Incentive Auction is unique among FCC spectrum auctions. Here we consider the estimated true valuation for these licenses based on market conditions. We further compare these results to more recent outcomes in previous FCC spectrum auctions for wireless services to determine if this novel auction mechanism
impacted auction outcomes.
Advisor: Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: L5, O3, K2, D44, L96
Regulatory Uncertainty: The Impact of the 2015 Open Internet Order on Broadband Infrastructure Investment
By Dane Bourcy Burkholder and Chin Jie Lim
This paper analyzes the impact of the United States Federal Communication’s (FCC) March 2015 Open Internet Order (OIO) on broadband infrastructure investment outcomes such as changes in speed of services, market entry. We find that higher broadband investment levels deter potential entrants and may weed out competition amongst incumbent ISPs from December 2014 to December 2016. The 2015 OIO appears to have negatively impacted the probability of an ISP entering a census block for the first time by 7.17% during any six-month time periods from June 2015 to December 2016 compared to the time period from June 2010 to December 2014.
Advisor: Dr. Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: D21, D25, D42, L20, L50, L96
A Brief Review and Analysis of Spectrum Auctions in Canada
by Martínez-Cid, Wenfei Jiao, and Zeren Zhang
Abstract
We begin by explaining the importance of efficient spectrum allocation and reviewing Canada’s recent spectrum allocation history. We then use a dataset covering more than 1,200 licenses auctioned from 2001 to 2015 that seeks to account for each auction’s particular rules. Our results confirm that measures of demand such as population covered, income levels, frequency levels, bandwidth, etc. indeed drive license valuation. We also quantify the negative impact on price of setting aside particular license auctions for new entrants, suggesting that the set-aside provision constitutes an implicit subsidy for those firms.
Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
JEL Codes: D44, D45, D47, L51, O33
Small Bidder Preferences in FCC Spectrum Auctions
By Alexandra Zrenner and Chidinma Hannah Nnoromele
The Federal Communications Commission faces a congressional mandate to ensure the participation of small business in its spectrum auctions. The FCC addresses this mandate using preferences for small bidders. This paper examines the impact on auction competition and outcomes of two preferences: bid credits and closed licenses. Bid credits are subsidies for small bidders, specifically, percentage discounts for winning bids made by small bidders. Closed licenses are set-asides for small bidders, that is, only small bidders are allowed to bid on a closed license. We analyze the auction results of 7,167 spectrum licenses for personal communication services. We specifically examine the number of bidders competing for a license, and the presence and use of bid credits and closed licenses. Our results demonstrate that the efficiency gains from competition are outweighed by the efficiency losses of small bidder preferences.
Advisor: Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: L5, L96, K20
Structural Estimation of FCC Bidder Valuation
By Renhao Tan, Zachary Lim, and Jackie Xiao
We modify a method introduced in Fox and Bajari (2013) which structurally estimates the deterministic component of bidder valuations in FCC spectrum auctions based on a pairwise stability condition: two bidders cannot exchange two licenses in a way that increases the sum of their valuations, and we apply it to C block auctions 5, 22, 35 and 58. Our modifications improve the fit of the Fox and Bajari (2013)’s estimator especially in similar auctions involving big bidders. We find that there is evidence of significant “cross-auction” complementaries between licenses sold in a particular auction and those already owned by these endowed bidders.
Advisor: Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: D44, D45, H82, L82
