Download or read book Essays on Strategic Behavior of Firms with Market Power written by Artak Meloyan and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of two chapters that try to examine the structural behaviour of firms with market power in two contexts: implicit collusion and merger. In the first chapter, we examine the implicit collusion in the U.S. corn seed market where several firms dominate the market and try to grasp consumer welfare. In these types of markets, firms can implicitly divide the market among each other and in each of these submarkets gain market power by offering different products than their competitors. Thus, the implicit collusion can potentially increase their market power. We show the difference in SPNE of implicit collusion between duopoly and oligopoly and examine whether or not there is evidence of implicit collusion in setting prices or product lines in the case of oligopoly. Results indicate that there is significant collusion in not only price setting stage, but also in product line choosing stage. The second chapter evaluates the impact of mergers on market prices through two different channels: efficiency gain vs. market concentration. We develop a theoretical model for firm's merger behavior, derive the equilibrium market prices both before and after the merger and decompose the total price change into two components: those due to the efficiency gain and those due to the market concentration. Then we apply the model to the case of a merger in mayonnaise market in 2015 to conduct empirical analyses using price-quantity data in the U.S. mayo market from 2013 to 2017. Results show a negative relationship between efficiency gain and market prices and positive relationship between market concentration and market prices. However, the efficiency gain effect outweighs the market concentration effect in the mayonnaise industry which leads to price decrease as a result of the merger.