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Published June 1978 | public
Journal Article

Price uncertainty and the exhaustive firm

Abstract

In the presence of a resource constraint the risk-averse exhaustive firm reacts to price uncertainty in a manner different than its competitive counterpart. In particular: (i) some results are independent of attitudes toward risk; (ii) comparative statics results differ from the no resource constraint case; and (iii) results depend upon the relative magnitudes of the discount rate and quasi-fixed costs. An assumption crucial to the relevance of risk-aversion in an intertemporal setting is the presence of imperfections in capital markets (i.e., the absence of complete contingent commodity markets).

Additional Information

© 1978 by Academic Press, Inc. Received March 16, 1977; revised August 24, 1977. Financial support from the Institute of Mining and Minerals Research, University of Kentucky, and from the Energy Research Development Association, Grant No. EX-76-G-03-1305, California Institute of Technology Energy Research Program is gratefully acknowledged. I wish to thank Stuart Greenbaum, Soren Lemche, and Agnar Sandmo for helpful comments, and Tracy Lewis for a suggestion that greatly improved the exposition of this paper. Helpful comments were also received from Ralph d'ilrge and a pair of anonymous references. Any inadequacies are my own. Formerly SSWP 156.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023