Mixed oligopoly, sequential entry, and spatial price discrimination

This paper is the first to examine the welfare consequences of a public firm in a traditional model of spatial price discrimination. It demonstrates that when a private firm acts as a Stackelberg location leader, the presence of a public firm always improves welfare. Moreover, when three firms locate sequentially, the presence of a public firm improves social welfare unless it locates last. Thus, despite examining a variety of location timings, including simultaneous location, privatization never improves welfare and usually harms welfare. This conclusion differs from several currently in the literature in which privatization often improves welfare. (JEL L13, L32, L33, L52)
I. INTRODUCTION The idea that a public firm can regulate oligopolistic behavior dates at least to Merrill and Schneider (1966), and researchers since then have spent considerable effort isolating whether [...]