Pricing and Production Flexibility: An Empirical Analysis of the U.S. Automotive Industry
利用2002-2009年美国汽车行业数据，研究发现生产混合灵活性减少了制造商的折扣，平均折扣降低约10%，且效果受需求不确定性、共线车型和竞争强度影响。
We use a detailed data set from the U.S. auto industry spanning from 2002 to 2009 and a variety of econometric methods to characterize the relationship between the availability of production mix flexibility and firms’ use of responsive pricing. We find that production mix flexibility is associated with reductions in observed manufacturer discounts, resulting from the increased ability to match supply and demand. Under the observed market conditions, mix flexibility accounts for substantial average savings by reducing price discounting by approximately 10% of the average industry discount. We test three supplementary hypotheses and find that the reduction in discounts for vehicles manufactured at flexible plants is (1) higher for higher demand uncertainty, (2) higher for vehicles coproduced with vehicles that belong to a different segment, and (3) lower in situations with higher local competition.