• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.304-312
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• 2011

In an oligopolistic market, only a few firms account for most or all of total production, e.g., automobile, steel, and computer industries. For a dynamic oligopolistic market with two firms competing in quantities, we show that supervisory control theory of discrete event systems provides a novel approach to solve the dynamic oligopoly problem with the aim of maximizing the profits of both firms. Specifically, we show that the controllability, observability, and nonblocking property (which are the core concepts in supervisory control theory) are the necessary and sufficient conditions for two oligopolistic firms in disequilibrium to eventually reach equilibrium states of maximizing the profits of both firms.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.194-211
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• 1993

This paper proposes an optimal incentive scheme for environmental pollution and output control in oligopoly markets under asymmetric information situation where the regulator has no information about each firm's technology on output productions and pollution abatements. We compare two interesting optimal incentive schemes (one is static model previously proposed and the other is dynamic model suggested in this paper), analyze features of these schemes, and carefully discuss its relevances to other schemes.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.35-60
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• 2010

In this paper, we develop a dynamic structural model based on a dynamic supergame and measure market power for the Dallas-Forth Worth fluid milk market in the U.S. In particular, we compare the conduct parameter estimates from a static model with that from the dynamic model and illustrate bias in the market-power measure in a static model. And we also analyze the cyclical behavior of firm conduct. We find that the conduct parameter in a static model underestimates true market power if firms' behaviors are posited by a dynamic oligopoly game. We also verify that firm conduct in the Dallas-Forth Worth fluid milk market is countercyclical against demand shocks and expected future cost shocks. Our results indicate that the firms' conduct in the Dallas-Forth Worth fluid milk market is consistent with what dynamic oligopoly models predict. This implies that the firms consider not only the contemporary reactions of the other firms' but also future market competition. Therefore, the measurement of market power requires the specification of fully dynamic pricing relationship.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.945-954
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• 2022

The 5G mobile network is promising to handle the dynamic traffic demands of user equipment (UE). Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with wireless transceivers can act as flying base stations in heterogeneous networks to ensure the quality of service of UE. However, it is challenging to efficiently allocate limited bandwidth to UE due to dynamic traffic demands and low network coverage. In this study, a blockchain-enabled bandwidth allocation framework is proposed for secure bandwidth trading. Furthermore, the proposed framework is based on the Cournot oligopoly game theoretical model to provide the optimal solution; that is, bandwidth is allocated to different UE based on the available bandwidth at UAV-assisted-based stations (UBSs) with optimal profit. The Cournot oligopoly game is performed between UBSs and cellular base stations (CBSs). Utility functions for both UBSs and CBSs are introduced on the basis of the available bandwidth, total demand of CSBs, and cost of providing cellular services. The proposed framework prevents security attacks and maximizes the utility functions of UBSs and CBSs.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.1192-1207
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• 2014

Dynamic spectrum sharing is a key technology to improve spectrum utilization in wireless networks. The elastic spectrum management provides a new opportunity for licensed primary users and unlicensed secondary users to efficiently utilize the scarce wireless resource. In this paper, we present a game-theoretic framework for dynamic spectrum allocation where the primary users rent the unutilized spectrum to the secondary users for a monetary profit. In reality, due to the ON-OFF behavior of the primary user, the quantity of spectrum that can be opportunistically shared by the secondary users is limited. We model this situation with the renewal theory and formulate the spectrum pricing scheme with the Bertrand game, taking into account the scarcity of the spectrum. By the Nash-equilibrium pricing scheme, each player in the game continually converges to a strategy that maximizes its own profit. We also investigate the impact of several properties, including channel quality and spectrum substitutability. Based on the equilibrium analysis, we finally propose a decentralized algorithm that leads the primary users to the Nash-equilibrium, called DST. The stability of the proposed algorithm in terms of convergence to the Nash equilibrium is also studied.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.52 no.11
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• pp.668-674
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• 2003

The electric marketplace is in the midst of major changes designed to promote competition. No longer vertically integrated with guaranteed customers and suppliers, electric generators and distributors will have to compete to sell and buy electricity. Unit commitment (UC) in such a competitive environment is not the same as the traditional one anymore. The objective of UC is not to minimize production cost as before but to find the solution that produces a maximum profit for a generation firm. This paper presents a hi-level formulation that decomposes the UC game into a generation-decision game (first level game) and a state(on/off)-decision game (second level game). Derivation that the first-level game has a pure Cournot Nash equilibrium(NE) helps to solve the second-level game. In case of having a mixed NE in the second-level game, this paper chooses a pure strategy having maximum probability in the mixed strategy in order to obviate the probabilistic on/off state which may be infeasible. Simulation results shows that proposed method gives the adequate UC solutions corresponding to a NE.

• Journal of Korea Trade
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.79-100
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• 2023

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the market power of the Korea Container Shipping Market (Intra Asia, Korea-Europe, and Korea-U.S.) to verify the existence of collusion empirically, and to answer whether the joint actions of liner market participants in Korea have formed market dominance for each route. Precisely, it will be verified through the Lerner index as to whether the regional market of Asia is a monopoly, oligopoly, or perfect competition. Design/methodology - This study used a Lerner index adjusted with elasticity presented in the New Imperial Organization (NEIO) studies. NEIO refers to a series of empirical studies that estimate parameters to judge market power from industrial data. This study uses B-L empirical models by Bresnahan (1982) and Lau (1982). In addition, NEIO research data statistically contain self-regression and stability problems as price and time series data. A dynamic model following Steen and Salvanes' Error Correction Model was used to solve this problem. Findings - The empirical results are as follows. First, λ, representing market power, is nearly zero in all three markets. Second, the Korean shipping market shows low demand elasticity on average. Nevertheless, the markup is low, a characteristic that is difficult to see in other industries. Third, the Korean shipping market generally remains close to perfect competition from 2014 to 2022, but extreme market power appears in a specific period, such as COVID-19. Fourth, there was no market power in the Intra Asia market from 2008 to 2014. Originality/value - Doubts about perfect competition in the liner market continued, but there were few empirical cases. This paper confirmed that the Korea liner market is a perfect competition market. This paper is the first to implement dynamics using ECM and recursive regression to demonstrate market power in the Korean liner market by dividing the shipping market into Deep Sea and Intra Asia separately. It is also the first to prove the most controversial problems in the current shipping industry numerically and academically.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.311-342
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• 2015

We evaluate two main rationales of massive policy intervention of Lee Administration in the Korean transportation fuel market: high market share of domestic refineries, perceived by the Administration as the result of high market concentration, and asymmetry in price adjustment, perceived as the result of collusion. Domestic refineries, huge in capacity and located at seaports, maintain international competitiveness in price. Considering market openness offering preferential treatment to importers, they set domestic prices competitively on the basis of MOPS prices. Yet, the price competitiveness of domestic refineries is so high that they are able to sustain high market share. We confirm that the Korean before-tax consumer prices of gasoline and diesel are lower than Japan's and the weighted averages of 27 EU countries by as much as 159KRW and 21KRW per liter in the case of gasoline and 170KRW and 63KRW in the case of diesel. Price asymmetry is caused by diverse economic and managerial reasons and, as FTC (2005) states, price asymmetry does not immediately imply exercise of market power or collusion. We analyzed price asymmetry in Korea, Japan and 14 EU countries, and found asymmetry in Korea and 11 EU countries in the case of gasoline and in Korea and 8 EU countries in the case of diesel.