Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/202382 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
EAG Discussion Paper No. EAG 09-3
Publisher: 
U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, Economic Analysis Group (EAG), Washington, DC
Abstract: 
Economists sometimes decry the persistence with which firms set prices above marginal cost and thus, according to the economists, fail to maximize profits. But it is the economists who have it wrong – first, because variable accounting costs are not always a good proxy for marginal economic costs, but more importantly because in an industry with U-shaped cost curves, a firm at a long-run sustainable equilibrium faces increasing marginal costs – i.e., a rising shadow price on some constrained input – i.e., in general, acost of capital. A corollary is that in such an industry the equilibrium mark-up over variable cost varies directly with capital intensity.
Subjects: 
market power
price
mark-up
marginal cost
variable cost
JEL: 
B21
D24
D43
K21
L11
L40
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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