Are Donors Afraid of Core Costs? Economies of Scale and Contestability in Charity Markets*
研究了非营利慈善市场中规模经济如何影响市场可竞争性，实验发现固定成本导致的效率与风险权衡可能引发低效技术采纳。
Abstract We study contestability in charity markets where non-commercial, not-for-profit providers supply a homogeneous collective good through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. Unlike in the case of for-profit competition, the absence of price-based sales contracts for charities means that fixed costs can translate into entry barriers, protecting the position of an inefficient incumbent; or, conversely, they can make it possible for inefficient newcomers to contest the position of a more efficient incumbent. Evidence from laboratory experiments show that fixed-cost driven tradeoffs between efficiency and perceived risk can lead to inefficient technology adoption.