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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing objectives that business-to-business (B2B) service companies pursue to set their prices and to examine the impact of market structure on these objectives.

To achieve the research objectives, data were collected from 193 companies operating in four different B2B service industries.

The findings of the study indicate that, in the current study, the companies investigated seem to follow various pricing objectives with a particular emphasis being placed on customer-related ones. The study also reveals that the market structure does have an impact on the pricing objectives pursued because different market conditions are found to lead to different pricing objectives.

The above findings indicate that the managers responsible for setting prices within their firms should follow a “situation-specific approach” and be guided by the unique characteristics of their markets.

Given the lack of similar studies in the existing B2B services literature, the value of the paper is that it represents one of the first attempts to empirically examine this issue.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing objectives (e.g. customer-related objectives, sales-related objectives, profit-related objectives) that service companies pursue to set their prices and to examine the impact of market structure on these objectives.

To achieve the research objectives, data were collected from 184 companies operating in four different service industries, namely, logistics companies, financial services providers, information technology companies and airlines.

The findings indicate that the companies that were investigated in the current study seem to follow a hierarchy of pricing objectives, in which their main focus is on the maintenance of the existing customers and the attraction of new ones to ensure their long-term survival in their market without, however, disregarding financial issues and objectives. The study also revealed that the market structure, along with the sector of operation, has an impact on the pricing objectives pursued, as different market conditions were found to lead to different pricing objectives.

The above findings indicate that managers responsible for setting prices within their firms should be guided by the unique characteristics of their markets.

Given the lack of similar studies within the existing services sector literature, the originality/value of the paper lies in the fact that it presents one of the first attempts to empirically examine this issue from a marketing point of view.

The purpose of this research paper is to explore the pricing objectives that service companies pursue to set their prices and to examine the impact of market structure. An extensive review of the literature revealed the complete lack of any previous work aiming to empirically investigate the impact of market structure on the company's pricing behavior and pricing objectives. Thus, the value of the paper lies in the fact that it presents the first attempt to empirically examine this issue from a marketing perspective. In order to achieve research objectives, data were collected from 170 companies operating in six different services sectors in Greece through personal interviews. The findings of the study show that the companies seem to follow a hierarchy of pricing objectives where their main focus is on the maintenance of the existing customers and the attraction of new ones, in order to ensure their long‐term position in the market without, however, disregarding financial considerations.

Plus Factors have long played an important role in inferring a price agreement from the totality of the evidence. In response to changes in the case law, economists have proposed two alternative paths for the future of price fixing analysis. This paper evaluates the suggested approaches and recommends retaining the enhanced Plus Factor methodology.

By carefully defining the Plus Factor concept, three key components of the analysis emerge: (1) information on communications associated with the alleged agreement, (2) economic considerations affecting market competition, and (3) characteristics that serve to differentiate explicit from tacit collusion.

Developments rationalizing the Plus Factor concept show promise, as the methodology is not more closely related to economic theory. On the other hand, replacement of the Plus Factor methodology with one focused on market performance seems problematic. By abandoning the Plus Factor concept, the economist loses a key institutional constraint on over-aggressive enforcement.

Until advocates can address the difficulties associated with using performance evidence to identify price fixing, the standard Plus Factor concept appears more appropriate. Thus, antitrust analysts should continue to use the Plus Factor methodology to infer agreements in price fixing investigations, as long as the economic rationalization of the specific Plus Factor is clearly presented.

The paper synthesizes a number of recent contributions to the price fixing literature and addresses key issues of interest to the enforcement community. By providing a critique of the proposed policy shift to use performance evidence to infer price fixing liability, the study serves to justify continued application of the Plus Factor methodology.

Prior research on the structure‐performance relationship has not investigated all of the relevant relationships among market structure, profits, prices, and explicitly calculated measures of firm efficiency. This paper replicates the four approaches in the literature, adds several innovations, and applies the analysis to banking data. We find more support for the structure‐conduct‐performance hypothesis than for the relative‐market‐power and efficient‐structure hypotheses, although the data are not fully consistent with any of these theories. We also find support for Hick's quiet‐life hypothesis, which implies that firms with market power adhere less rigorously to efficiency maximization. J.E.L. Classification Numbers G21, G28, L41, L89 The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Board of Governors or its staff. The authors thank Dean Amel, Jim Berkovec, Myron Kwast, Nellie Liang, LenNakamura, Steve Rhoades, and participants in the meeting of the Federal Reserve System Committee on Financial Structure and Regulation for helpful comments, and Ken Cavalluzzo, Jalal Akhavein, John Leusner, and Seth Bonime for outstanding research assistance.

This study aims to examine the critical role of types of coopetition (upstream/downstream), market structure (concentrated/competitive) and innovation (low vs high degree of innovation) that can affect the way consumers perceive the resulting price (un)fairness of new offerings.

Three between-subjects experiments involving different participant populations and product categories were conducted to test the research hypotheses.

The valence of the effect of types of coopetition (upstream/downstream) on price fairness is conditional on the market structure and the degree of innovation associated with the new product offering. Downstream (as opposed to upstream) coopetition is much more detrimental to perceptions of price fairness in a concentrated market than in a competitive and fragmented market. However, within a competitive market, downstream coopetition may lead to greater price fairness perception than upstream coopetition when the new product offering is highly innovative.

The current study uses lab experiments with fictitious scenarios and focuses on two moderating variables: market structure and innovation perceptions. Future research may use field experiments and explore additional moderating variables that may annihilate the negative effect of downstream coopetition on price fairness perception, especially in a concentrated market.

In concentrated markets, firms should opt for upstream rather than downstream coopetition to limit the negative effect the announcement of coopetition has on price fairness evaluation. However, within a competitive market, when the new product offering resulting from coopetition is associated with a high perceived degree of innovation, firms should opt for downstream rather than upstream coopetition because of its positive impact on price fairness evaluation.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate that new product development from coopetition has important implications for the perception of price fairness, leading to positive or negative effects depending on market structure and the degree of innovation of the new product offering. It then explores the conditions under which types of coopetition (upstream/downstream) might backfire.

This paper aims to measure the trade price impact of a recent regulatory disclosure intervention in municipal securities secondary markets, which required broker-dealers to disclose securities trading information on a near-real-time and continuing basis.

The author analyzes trade price outcomes in the preintervention and postintervention regimes using a suite of time series estimations that give heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors (Prais–Winsten and Cochrain–Orcutt), accommodate higher-order lag structure in the error term (autoregressive integrated moving average) and account for volatility clustering in the time series (generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity).

Results show that regulatory disclosure intervention significantly improved trade price efficiency in municipal securities secondary markets as daily trade price differential and volatility both declined market-wide after the disclosure intervention.

The sample consists of trades in State of California general obligation bonds; therefore, empirical findings may not be generalizable to other states, local governments and different types of bonds.

The findings highlight voluntary information disclosure as a practical and effective mechanism in disclosure regulation of municipal securities secondary markets.

Only a small body of work exists that examines information disclosure regulation in municipal securities secondary markets; therefore, this paper expands knowledge on the topic and should provide renewed impetus for regulatory efforts aimed at improving the efficiency of municipal capital markets.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

As the pharmaceutical industry is one of the key sectors of the health-care system, the identification of its structure is of particular importance. This paper aims to determine the structure of the pharmaceutical industry in Iran to provide appropriate solutions for pricing and regulation by policymakers. Iran is a growing pharmaceutical market with over $4bn in sales, so the supply side needs to be examined to meet the domestic consumption.

This research is a descriptive and retrospective analytical study which examines the Iranian pharmaceutical industry through library studies and using pharmaceutical data of the country’s Food and Drug Administration during 1992-2016. Due to data availability in firm level, the concentration ratio of N leading firms and the Herfindahl–Hirschman index are used to measure the concentration of the pharmaceutical market in 2014 and 2016.

The results show that pharmaceutical manufacturing, importing companies and distributing companies play roles in monopolistic competition market, loose oligopoly market and oligopoly market, respectively. For all companies, the magnitudes of Herfindahl–Hirschman indices indicate non-competitive settings. As a result, these companies set their own prices, and market demand affects their sales. In addition, demand for medicines is shaped in the form of supply-induced demand.

This research was accomplished with no computational limitation. However, it was confined to only one country, one industry and the mentioned period of study.

The pharmaceutical manufacturers have no influence on medicine prices, and government pricing regulations lessen the market power of such market agents. However, the easy entry to and exit from market stimulate producers to participate in manufacturing activities. The pharmaceutical importers may expand their imports in response to entry new actors; however, the new entrants weaken the coordination on pricing decisions.

As pharmaceutical distributers act in an oligopoly market, they can collude, reduce competition and lower the welfare of pharmaceutical consumers. In such conditions, high investment requirements and economies of scale may discourage the entry of new firms.

Although there are various studies on market structure in non-pharmaceutical industries, this study is a new effort to measure concentration in the Iranian pharmaceutical market and to determine its structure.

The revenue management (RM) discipline is built on the principle of demand-based pricing. This study aims to examine how and to what extent RM can be implemented in the hotel industry during low-demand periods, particularly during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

This paper used semi-structured interviews to gather information from hotel RM executives, RM consultants and RM system providers. Participants were asked to think about the impact of COVID-19 on their RM practices. This paper interviewed 26 revenue executives between January and March 2020.

Core RM processes are still relevant during the COVID-19 crisis; however, not all components are equally important. Business analysis, pricing strategy and demand modeling and forecasting are the most critical RM processes. Inventory and price optimization and setting booking controls are not as important at this time; along with distribution channel management, these processes will become more relevant as demand picks up.

Future research in this area should focus on each core RM process separately and in-depth to understand how implementation changes during the crisis and recovery periods. Future studies should also investigate how these processes operate during the recovery period. The full breadth of consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in hotel RM will likely manifest gradually. Therefore, the core RM processes should also be examined when the crisis is over.

Apart from a few studies that touched on RM-related strategies during economic downturns, to the knowledge, this is the first study to systematically examine the extent to which RM can be implemented during a crisis.