Page 111 - Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program Proceedings 2017-18

School of Business and Management
Department of Economics

This paper shows the possibility of presence of cartel can explain the pricing phenomenon in the periodic market, such
as Hong Kong Book Fair, Flower Market in Chinese New Year and Flea Market. Our model shows that the difficulty of
sustaining the collusion in a periodic event is increasing from day to day. Therefore, one of the ways for sellers to sustain
the collusion is to drop the price of their products in later days of the event which is consistent with the pricing
phenomenon in some of the periodic market. Some real life examples will be presented to support our findings.

Supervisor: FONG Yuk Fai / ECON
Student: MASLIN Jason / ECOF Course: UROP1100, Fall

This paper is based on understanding predatory pricing and how it is proven in courts. Predatory Pricing is the act of
selling goods at such low prices that it’s impossible to make profits without driving out competitors, upon which prices
are inflated to recoup losses ultimately harming consumers. Common methods used to prove predatory pricing such as
as-efficient competitor and Areeda-Turner tests are discussed. To understand the court’s judgement and firm’s
strategies, the report will review cases involving Intel, Bombadier, and others. Criticism against predatory pricing such as
misusing predatory pricing laws are also discussed. The research shows that while commonalities exist between cases,
there remains notable differences in the verdicts due to differing laws and precedence in different regions.

Supervisor: FONG Yuk Fai / ECON
Student: ZHAO Liang / MAEC Course: UROP1100, Fall

This paper examines the effects on the tacit collusion of the increased price transparency on the consumer side in a
Bertrand case. The analysis is provided to explain intuition and the mathematical model is developed to provide
theoretical support. Different from traditional research conclusion which suggests that the higher price transparency
destabilizes collusion, in this paper, it is shown that by lowering the search cost on the consumer side, the increased
price transparency facilitates the tacit collusion. Hence, the paper provides different angles of analysis on the effect of
the price transparency which may serves as a complement or derivative of the existing study of the effect of price
transparency on tacit collusion.

Game Theoretical Analyze of Remarriage Market
Supervisor: FONG Yuk Fai / ECON
Student: WANG Jiahui / MAEC Course: UROP1100, Fall

Remarriage is performing a new trend nowadays and many studies have been done in recent years. However, previous
papers on remarriage are usually from the view of social sciences and the findings are usually summaries of statistics.
Few mathematical models were raised. Inspired by the lack of rigorous modeling in this area, this paper built a model of
determinant functions for remarriage to predict the decision of remarriage as a bargaining game. The model included
income distribution, age gap and costs of stepchildren as main determinants. And different properties of the functions
for husband and wife are explained. With this model, several well-founded patterns of remarriage by previous studies
can be explained and further modification may be applicable to it.

Supervisor: FONG Yuk Fai / ECON
Student: XU Feiting / MAEC Course: UROP1100, Fall

The increasing spouse poaching phenomena lowers the general marital satisfaction which draws the attention of
economists. This report analyzes the reasons of spouse poaching by applying signaling model and argues that successful

101