Research
"If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you're not sure you can do it,
say yes, then learn to do it later"
My main area of research is Industrial Economics: Price Competition, Strategic Obfuscation, Economics of Advertising, Competition Policy, Regulation.
My work is grounded in real world policy questions and draws insights from Behavioural Economics, including topics of Bounded Rationality, Consumer Choice and Biases, and Consumer Inattention. I am also currently working on topics of equilibrium existence in price games.
Information can also be found on my ResearchGate profile.
Publications
Information, Bertrand-Edgeworth competition and the law of one price (2022), Journal of Mathematical Economics
with Robert Routledge
Presentations: EARIE 2019 (Barcelona), OLIGO (2019) (Loughborough), Economic Theory & Computation Workshop 2019 (Liverpool).
Homogeneous goods often sell at different prices within the same market. This paper proposes a theoretical foundation for this phenomenon in the context of a capacity-constrained price game. Sellers have asymmetric information about the market demand, modelled by a partition of the state space, and evaluate uncertain profits in a way consistent with ambiguity aversion. We demonstrate that a pure strategy price equilibrium exists if the market demand is uniformly elastic in each state. Interestingly, the sellers may choose different prices, violating the law of one price. Moreover, market demand may be rationed between the sellers, resulting in consumers purchasing at different prices.
Existence and Uniqueness of Nash Equilibrium in Discontinuous Bertrand Games: A Complete Characterization (2022), International Journal of Game Theory
with Robert Routledge
Presentations: Lisbon Game Theory Meetings (2019), OLIGO Workshop (2020).
Since (Reny in Econometrica 67:1029–1056, 1999) a substantial body of research has considered what conditions are sufficient for the existence of a pure strategy Nash equilibrium in games with discontinuous payoffs. This work analyzes a gen- eral Bertrand game, with convex costs and an arbitrary sharing rule at price ties, in which tied payoffs may be greater than non-tied payoffs when both are positive. On this domain, necessary and sufficient conditions for (i) the existence of equilibrium (ii) the uniqueness of equilibrium are presented. The conditions are intuitively easy to understand and centre around the relationships between intervals of real numbers determined by the primitives of the model.
The Potential of Structurally Insulated Panels to Supply Net Zero Carbon Housing (2022), Buildings
with Steve Finnegan, Bushra Al-Derbi, Iona Campbell and Matt Fulton.
Governments throughout the EU and the UK face a persistent challenge of satisfying the continual growth in demand for housing and create zero carbon buildings. This paper presents a novel conceptual framework and empirical results to evaluate the potential for Structurally Insulated Panels (SIPs) to address this challenge. Firstly, we present a comprehensive analysis of the energy performance of a SIPs building in the UK to evaluate the potential for such technologies to satisfy the energy and carbon objectives. Using our unique data set we show that SIPs can exceed the necessary energy efficiency standards and reach Net Zero Carbon. Secondly, we introduce game theory as a novel conceptual framework to understand the incentives of the manufacturers of SIPs and UK/EU authorities. This enables us to identify potential sources of incentive conflict, which inhibit the diffusion of such technologies. We demonstrate that it benefits both parties to engage in medium investment, but the inferior under investment scenario can emerge if the UK/EU does not provide leadership and commitment to SIPs technologies. Regardless of the market design in terms of the timing of decisions, the maximum level of support by both the UK/EU and the SIPs manufacturers cannot be achieved.
Ambiguity & Price Competition (2020) Theory & Decision, 88, p. 231-256.
Joint with Dr Robert Routledge.
Presentations: OLIGO Workshop 2018 (Piraeus, Athens), UoL Internal Seminar Series 2018.
This work analyzes a general incomplete information extension of the classical Bertrand price game with discontinuous payoffs. Sellers have incomplete information regarding state-contingent market demands and cost functions. At the ex ante stage sellers have maximin expected utilities (MEU) consistent with ambiguity aversion. The prices which sellers post in the marketplace must be measurable with repect to their private information. In this context, existence results for a continuum of pure strategy price equilibria are presented which permit discontinuities in the market demand and a general class of sharing rules at price ties.
Pricing and Obfuscation with Complexity Averse Consumers (2019), Oxford Economic Papers, 71 (3), p. 777-798
Job Market Paper. Available Open Access.
Presentations: EARIE 2017 (Maastricht), Network of Industrial Economists Symposium 2017 (Loughborough), OLIGO Workshop 2017 (Moscow).
Competition models typically assume that consumers who cannot compare prices, buy randomly. This paper models the idea that firms may obfuscate product information to confuse consumers, but confused consumers prefer simple alternatives. We show that complexity aversion generates competition in obfuscation, in addition to prices. Markets become more transparent, which enables more consumers to understand prices and stimulates price competition. Three results are most interesting. Firstly, even when simple products are the most expensive in the market, firm profit can be lower when confused consumers favour simple products. Secondly, profit is not always lower in less obfuscated markets. Thirdly, obfuscation can only be eliminated if some consumers are always confused and policies to improve consumer sophistication can stimulate obfuscation.
Working Papers
Postal Platform Pricing with Limited Consumer Attention
Joint with Dr Christian Bach (University of Liverpool) & Dr Christian Jaag (Swiss Economics)
Abstract available upon request.
Market Competition & Public Goods Provision
Joint with Dr Robert Routledge.
This work studies an economy with a private good and a public good. The economy is populated with a finite number of individuals endowed with quasilinear preferences, and a finite number of private producers of the public good with convex cost functiions. The Pareto effieicnt quantity of the public good is characterized. A sufficient condition is given for the Pareto efficient quantity of the public good to be achievable in a double Nash equilibrium with: (i) the individuals playing a Nash equilibrium in private provisions, (ii) the producers playing a Nash equilibrium in a price competition game.
Existence of Bayesian Price Equilibrium
Joint with Dr Robert Routledge.
Work in Progress
Funding Awards
ESRC 1+3 Doctoral Training Centre Grant - Value: £90,000.
University of Liverpool Pump Priming, Competitive Research Funding Award - Value: £750.