Seminar in Economics | with Luise Eisfeld
Welcome to this Higher Seminar in Economics organized by the Department of Economics, SSE. The seminar speaker is Luise Eisfeld, HEC Lausanne who will present “Who bears the brunt of cost shocks? Analyzing pass-through on dual-mode e-commerce platforms”
(joint work with Jun Yan and Li Yu)
Abstract
E-commerce platforms have altered the retailing industry by operating under a dual mode: They not only act as retailers selling products of their own, but also provide online marketplaces where third-party sellers compete and offer products. How does this market environment affect the pass-through of cost shocks to consumer prices? In this paper, we aim to answer this question by developing theoretical models to analytically characterize pass-through mechanisms, and by providing empirical pass-through estimates. Our theoretical results show that, under quantity competition, cost pass-through is higher in an industry operating under a dual-mode platform, compared to a benchmark setting without the platform. Under price competition, the presence of a dual-mode platform can generate price dispersion. With asymmetric (firm-specific) cost shocks, we find heterogeneity in pass-through of one's own cost and the competitor's cost. We introduce data from Amazon and provide reduced-form estimates of pass-through, using recent cost shocks that affected distinct product markets. Our paper suggests that dual-mode e-commerce platforms play an important role in determining whether the consumer or the seller bears the consequences of cost changes
More about the Speaker
The seminar takes place at Stockholm School of Economics, Sveavägen 65, room A342.
Please contact kathrine.abelson@hhs.se if you have any questions.