How hard is it to maximize profit? Evidence from a 19th-century Italian state monopoly

In this paper, we study the ability of the 19th-century Italian government to choose profit maximizing prices for a multiproduct monopolist. We use very detailed historical data on the tobacco consumption in 62 Italian provinces from 1871 to 1888 to estimate a differentiated product demand system. The demand conditions and the legal environment of the period made this market as close to a textbook monopoly as is practically possible. The government’s stated aim for this industry was profit maximization: since at the time profits from tobacco were close to 10% of the revenues for the cash-strapped government, the stated aim was very likely the true one. Our empirical application uses historical price and cost data, and suggests that the government was not wide off the mark: the tobacco prices were ‘not far’ from those dictated by the multiproduct monopoly formulae for profit maximization with interdependent demand functions.

The Bright Side of Having an Enemy

Conventional wisdom suggests that more intense competition will lower firms’ profits. The authors show that this may not hold in a channel setting with exclusive retailers. They find that a manufacturer and its retailer can both become worse off if their competing manufacturer and retailer with quality-differentiated products exit the market. Put differently, in a channel setting, more intense competition can be all-win for the manufacturer, the retailer, and the consumers. Interestingly, a high-quality manufacturer can benefit from an increase in its competitor’s perceived quality (e.g., due to favorable product reviews from consumers or third-party rating agencies). In other words, a manufacturer may prefer a strong rather than a weak enemy, and the manufacturer can have an incentive to help its competitor improve product quality or remain in the market. Furthermore, the authors show that a multiproduct monopolist manufacturer with an exclusive retailer may make higher profits by spinning off a product into a competing manufacturer that has its own retail channel, even without accounting for any proceeds from the spinoff.