Abstract

This article explores how consumers’ bounded rationality can justify antitrust intervention when a firm becomes a monopoly and exploits a product attribute that was not policed by market forces when there was competition for the market. Behavioral economics predicts product complexity leads consumer demand to be a function of salient costs and benefits rather than of actual costs and benefits of products. The divergence between the former and the latter hinders and distorts competition. In fact, comparison shopping is costlier, and sellers can backload part of their prices to nonsalient product attributes. Consumers perceive only a distorted lower price by focusing on salient product features, which leaves room for inefficient matching and opportunistic behavior given the risk of ex post exploitation. These are behavioral limits of competition. In this work, I argue that when (i) there is a lock-in problem, (ii) consumers do not control the probability of triggering a hidden price, and (iii) a typical consumer could not have reasonably expected to find such a hidden price, antitrust intervention would not only deter ex post exploitation but would also enhance competition on the real price of goods. Antitrust would correct a behavioral market failure.

中文翻译：

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没有警报，没有很多惊喜：在反托拉斯环境中，显着性是过度定价干预的基础

摘要

本文探讨了当企业成为垄断企业时，消费者的有限理性如何能够证明反托拉斯干预的合理性，以及如何利用在市场竞争中不受市场力量约束的产品属性。行为经济学预测，产品复杂性会导致消费者需求取决于显着的成本和收益，而不是产品的实际成本和收益。前者和后者之间的分歧阻碍和扭曲了竞争。实际上，比较购物的成本更高，卖家可以将其部分价格转嫁给不显眼的产品属性。消费者通过专注于突出的产品功能，只会感觉到较低的价格扭曲，这考虑到事后风险，为低效率的匹配和机会主义行为留出了空间开发。这些是竞争的行为限制。在这项工作中，我认为，当（i）存在锁定问题时，（ii）消费者无法控制触发隐性价格的可能性，并且（iii）典型的消费者不可能合理地期望找到这样的价格隐藏的价格，反托拉斯干预不仅会阻止事后剥削，而且会加剧商品实际价格上的竞争。反托拉斯将纠正行为市场失灵。