Communication à un séminaire :
Jean François Houde (University of Wisconsin - Madison),
« Price Negotiation in Differentiated Products Markets: The Case of Insured Mortgages in Canada »,
Econometrics Seminar, TSE, Toulouse, 3 avril 2012, 15:30-17:00, salle Amphi S.
Résumé
This paper measures market power in a decentralized market where contracts
are determined through a search and negotiation process. The mortgage industry has many
institutional features which suggest it should be competitive: homogeneous contracts, negotiable
rates, and, for a given consumer, common lending costs across lenders. As a result,
even with a small number of competing lenders, informed borrowers can gather multiple
quotes offering interest rates that reflect the expected cost of lending. However, there is important
heterogeneity in the ability of consumers to understand the subtleties of financial
contracts, in their ability or willingness to negotiate and search for multiple quotes, and
also in their degree of loyalty to their main financial institutions. We propose and estimate
a model to disentangle the different channels through which market power can arise for a
given transaction in this environment. There are two main sources of market power. The
first is search frictions. To quantify search frictions the model we develop is sequential;
consumers are initially matched with a home bank to obtain a mortgage quote, and can
then decide, based on their search costs, whether or not to gather additional quotes from
banks in their neighborhood. We find that over the five year period of the contract the
average search cost corresponds to an upfront sunk cost of between $1,047 and $1,590. The
second main source of market power is switching costs. We estimate that consumers are
willing to pay between $759 and $1,617 upfront to avoid having to switch banks.
Econométrie et statistique