主 题：Referral Alliance and Consumer Search
主讲人：西南财经大学工商管理学院 黄溢峰博士
主持人：工商管理学院 邱奕宾 副教授
时 间：2015年10月30日（星期五）下午 12：30-14：00
地 点：柳林校区经世楼B206
主办单位：工商管理学院 科研处
主讲人简介：
黄溢峰为美国波士顿大学经济学博士，目前在西南财经大学工商管理学院任教。主要从事产业组织、博弈论的理论与应用研究。目前发表了1篇SSCI的国际期刊论文。
内容摘要：
In this paper we pursue three main objectives: (1) to develop a model of firm referrals in the presence of consumer search, (2) to identify the incentives for firms to enter a referral alliance, (3) to investigate the market impacts of firms' proactive engagement in referral alliances. To achieve these purposes, we extend the Wolinsky's (1986) model to a three-stage game with two types of products produced by a continuum of firms, with each one having strength in a single type only. In the first stage, firms simultaneously decide on the formation of referral alliances, in which each alliance consists of a pair of firms producing different types of products. In the second stage, they set price simultaneously. In the third stage, each consumer who only values one type of product searches sequentially for the right product. We show that firms with low ability to deal with the unmatched consumers are positively assorted together in the formation of referral alliance with multiple equilibrium being possible. The proliferation of referral alliance always benefits consumers but not necessarily firms. One the one hand, it intensifies competition and drives down the market price. On the other hand, it increases the mass of consumers participating in the search market. The price elasticity of demand together with our stability condition are important determinants of the comparatic statics for the changes in consumer and social welfare as the search cost reduces. The reduction in search cost always increase consumer and social welfare only if the equilibrium is stable with elastic demand. The policy implication from our results is that it might be more effective to improve consumer and social welfare by inducing more firms to participate in the referral alliances rather than reducing the consumers' search cost.
