Business Economics – BUST08005 Assignment Two 2023
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Business Economics – BUST08005
Assignment Two 2023 (weight 50%)
This year’s second assignment offers two alternative tasks: a numerical problem and an essay question. You must choose only ONE of them. Use the knowledge acquired in class in combination with your own research.
PROBLEM (max 10 pages)
The big pharmaceutical company AstraVenera released its globally patented covid vaccine on early 2023 in two bordering, but sharply different countries: Haiti (HA) and Dominican Republic (DR), with a strict ban on cross-border sales agreed with the Haitian government. The respective demand functions (in million units) for both countries are:
QHA=20-2PHA
QDR=28-PDR
The total cost (TC), in millions too, depends on the total amount of units produced Q = Q DR + QHA and also includes 30 million of fixed costs. TC follows the expression:
TC=30+2Q+Q2/8
i. Does AstraVenera meet the conditions necessary to implement price discrimination? Explain. (10%)
ii. What should be AstraVenera’s profit-maximization strategy? Indicate prices and quantities, as well as the amount of social welfare generated. (30%)
iii. Are the prices above consistent with the rule of elasticities? (15%)
iv. Soon beginning to suspect of rampant corruption within the Haitian government –some officials keeping whole vaccine pallets for themselves to sell illegally to wealthy Dominicans, AstraVenera considers investing in additional security at the border to prevent cross-country sales. How much at most should AstraVenera invest on that? (25%)
v. Knowing that AstraVenera did not finally invest in extra security, now assume a second competitor, Pfizoll, with their own patented covid vaccine, enters the relevant market so it becomes a duopoly. The two brands of vaccine are considered homogeneous by the buyers so the two companies will split the demand and charge the same price, competing only on market share. If Pfizoll’stotal cost function is TC=30+2Q+Q2/20, determine the optimal quantities and market shares for both companies. (10%)
vi. Explain what would happen to the market as described in v) if it was suddenly discovered that 50% of the vaccines supplied by both companies have reduced efficacy. Buyers, which are risk-neutral, cannot tell the good vaccines from the bad ones and their demand for reduced-efficacy vaccines is QDR=5-PDR (10%)
You can scan your handwritten answers if you prefer. Please round your numbers to two decimals. Excellent answers always include five elements: A) the correct results, B) all workings, C) definitions of all relevant concepts, D) charts and diagrams when needed, and E) discussion of the results. Make sure you never go beyond the 10-page limit of the problem set.
ESSAY: NETWORK EFFECTS (max 2,000 words ± 10%)
You are in London now to participate in the Startup Grind Europe event. You are behind a stand that the event organizers provide for consultants to offer their services pro bono to entrepreneurs, who may come to request different types of business advice. The second day of the conference, you bump into some former classmates who are now thinking of bringing their business idea to market: a cloud-gaming service in which payers can run video games on remote servers and stream them directly to their own devices. They are worried by the recent failure of Google’s Stadia platform and need advice on network effects in order to prepare for an upcoming business pitch. You agree to prepare a 2,000-word written report for them.
Please cover the following in your report:
a) Explain the different sides of a platform like this. Was the Stadia pricing consistent with what we know about the rule of elasticities?
b) Indicate what type of network effects a cloud gaming service would experience.
c) Provide recommendations to achieve a critical mass of users in this type of service, with particular focus on penetration pricing. Was stadia successful in achieving that?
d) Discuss the main threats to your client’s market power and how they could protect against them.
You can provide tables, figures, screenshots, and appendices to support your arguments. These contents will not be part of the essay’sword count but they will be positively valued (5% of marks). You are also expected to look for your own additional references, which can include academic papers, industry reports, press releases, legal documentation, online videos, and other sources. A list of references must be provided at the end of the essay. Formatting and presentation will also betaken into account for the final mark (5%).
Essay length: 2,000 words or 10 pages of problems.
Deadline: 2pm on Friday, December 8th 2023
2023-11-25