邮电通信业市场势力测度及对行业发展影响的实证分析

测度市场势力是监控垄断行业滥用市场势力和反垄断的前提,价格—边际成本差额(即勒纳指数)测度法是广泛认可的市场势力测度方法,但由于边际成本的不可获得性,实际上难以直接应用。本文以广受关注的邮电通信业为例解决了这一难题:基于行业数据特征,通过适当变换替代了经济学难以度量的边际成本和实物量,得到了一种能直接计算勒纳指数的方法,该方法适合于观察中长期市场势力,计量分析中明显优于使用价格—平均成本替代价格—边际成本的功效。基于测度结果,实证了市场势力、技术进步(考虑动态效率)、市场结构变化对行业发展的影响。研究发现,技术进步对行业增长有大的贡献,但市场势力产生了负效应,电信业市场结构调整没有达到业务分拆的初衷。上述研究方法和结论对政府制定垄断行业价格成本监审办法和反垄断立法有借鉴意义。     

制造业外资进入与市场势力波动:竞争还是垄断

对外资市场效应的评估和计量是处理好外资政策、产业政策和反垄断政策关系的重要问题。本文采用中国1999—2010年28个两位数和447个四位数代码制造业面板数据,首先估计了两位数代码制造业的市场势力水平,然后进一步考察外资进入的市场效应,并测度外资引致的福利变动。研究表明:制造业各行业存在显著的市场势力,但金融危机前后市场势力溢价水平波动较大。全样本结果显示制造业市场势力溢价约为6.2%,但金融危机前样本证实市场势力溢价高达22.1%。细分产业中,外资的竞争效应占主导,但在部分产业中外资表现出了反竞争效应。制造业总体层面上,外资进入与市场势力波动之间呈现U形非线性关系,拐点稳定在外资比重为47.3%—54.0%的区间内。从福利角度看,外资进入的竞争效应,使得垄断带来的无谓损失减少了3334.70亿元;但FDI的反竞争效应使得相应行业垄断福利损失增加2407.45亿元。     

Estimation of price-cost margins and union bargaining power for Belgian manufacturing

This paper extends Hall's (1988) [Hall, R.E., 1988. The relationship between price and marginal cost in US industry, Journal of Political Economy, 96, 921–947] methodology to analyze imperfections in both the product and the labor market for firms in the Belgian manufacturing industry over the period 1988–1995. We investigate the heterogeneity in price-cost mark-up and workers' bargaining power parameters among 18 sectors within the manufacturing industry as well as the relationship between both parameters. Using a sample of more than 7000 firms, our GMM results indicate that ignoring imperfection in the labor market leads to an underestimation of the price-cost margin evaluated at perfect competition in the labor market. These findings are confirmed in the sectoral analysis. Sectors with higher workers' bargaining power typically show higher price-cost margins.     

Market Power, Scale Economies and Productivity: Estimates from a Panel of Establishment Data

This paper presents a new econometric framework that permits simultaneous estimation of price-cost margins, scale economies and productivity from a panel of establishment data. The model contains only a few, economically interesting parameters to be estimated, but it is nevertheless consistent with a flexible (translog) underlying technology, quasi-fixed capital and the presence of persistent differences in productivity between establishments. The framework is applied to study market power, scale economies and productivity differences in a number of manufacturing industries in Norway. The results reveal statistically significant, but quite small, margins between price and marginal costs in most manufacturing industries.     

市场势力与规模效应的直接测度——运用新产业组织实证方法对中国钢铁产业的研究

在反垄断与管制过程中,最核心的问题就是对产业市场势力给出直接有效的测定。本文引进近年来发展的新产业组织实证方法(New Empirical IndustrialOrganization),根据中国产业数据的实际进行调整,引入动态的技术进步模型结构,允许企业之间存在生产率差异和规模效应,采用2004—2007年间的面板数据,运用双向随机效应模型GMM估计方法,直接估计了中国钢铁业的市场势力溢价和规模弹性。通过计量得到结论:①目前中国的钢铁产业不存在系统性的市场势力。钢铁产业依然处于完全竞争状态,竞争十分激烈;②传统意义上认为钢铁业所具有的规模效应在中国上市钢铁企业中没有体现,相反中国钢铁产业存在规模不经济的重要特征。     

On the Relationship between International Outsourcing and Price–Cost Margins in European Industries

This paper sets up a model, where multinationals compete in quantities and domestic firms form a competitive fringe. Within this framework, we analyse the relationship between market concentration, international outsourcing and the industry price-cost margin. The empirical results of a panel of 66 industries and the EU12 countries in the 1990s strongly confirm our theoretical hypotheses. Market concentration and international outsourcing are positively related to industry price–cost margins. In a thought experiment, we show that industry price–cost margins would have decreased by 0.4 percentage points more in the 1990s, if international outsourcing had not changed since 1990. In addition, international outsourcing accounts for a convergence in margins across industries in the last decade.     

Falling margins and rising costs

Several recent papers have examined the way that industrial price-cost margins have evolved over time in response to changing demand and competitive conditions. This paper discusses a rationale for the inclusion of a third determining factor — changing unit costs. Time series analysis of a sample of seven oligopolistic industries indicates that in all cases, shocks to unit costs do play an important and statistically significant role in determining the margin. Moreover, the longer term trend in unit costs is also found to have a negative relationship with the margin, in five industries significant. This finding helps explain the decline in price-cost margins in high concentration industries in the 1970s, and provides some micro-level support for the hypothesis of an aggregate profit squeeze in the U.S. manufacturing sector over that period.This paper is drawn in part from the second essay of my Doctoral Dissertation. I would like to thank, without implicating, the members of my committee: Thomas Weisskopf, Stephen Salant, Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Severin Borenstein, and Valerie Suslow. Ralph Bradburd and an anonymous referee also provided helpful comments.     

Structure,conduct, performance,and welfare

This paper extends previous analysis of weaknesses of the structure-conduct-performance paradigm and of the price-cost margin as a measure of performance. Sufficient conditions are established under which monotonic linkages may not exist between virtually any two of social welfare, its individual components, structure, conduct, or performance.     

Alternative profitability measures and tests of the structure-performance relationship

This paper compares the inferences gained when alternatively specifying Census-based price-cost margin and IRS-based accounting rate of return as the dependent variable in conventional structure-performance models. We find important differences between the structure-performance inferences of the alternative specifications of the profit measure. Further, the alternative profit measures are not highly correlated.The authors acknowledge the constructive comments of an anonymous referee.     

不同渠道的技术溢出与中国制造业绿色生产率

本文基于中国制造业20个子行业2005~2019年的投入产出数据,利用超效率SBM模型,对中国制造业总体绿色全要素生产率(GTFP)和不同技术密集度的制造业绿色全要素生产率进行了考察。结果表明,2005~2019年中国制造业总体绿色全要素生产率先下降后缓慢上升。同时,本文通过对不同渠道下的技术溢出对中国制造业绿色生产率的影响进行了实证检验。结果表明,不同渠道的技术溢出对制造业总体及不同技术密集度的制造业绿色全要素生产率的影响方向基本一致,具体表现为贸易溢出的影响不显著,FDI溢出抑制绿色生产率的提高,ODI溢出对绿色生产率有较强促进作用,但每种渠道技术溢出对不同技术密集度的制造业在影响程度上存在差异。本文认为,中国制造业绿色全要素生产率未来存在较大的提升空间,加大对外投资是提升中国制造业绿色全要素生产率的最有效渠道。     

Cournot competition in wholesale electricity markets: The Nordic power exchange,Nord Pool

Horizontal shifts in bid curves observed in wholesale electricity markets are consistent with Cournot competition. Quantity competition reduces the informational requirements associated with evaluating market performance because the price-cost margins of all producers then depend on the same inverse residual demand curve instead of one for each firm. We apply the model to the day-ahead market of the Nordic power exchange, Nord Pool, for the years 2011-13. We reject the null hypothesis of perfect competition in all specifications. Results suggest that the average price-cost margin across the sample period was around four percent.     

EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION ON PRODUCTIVITY AND INDUSTRY GROWTH: A STUDY OF STEEL REFINING FURNACES*

This paper examines the impact of new technology on plant‐level productivity in the Japanese steel industry during the 1950's and 1960's. We estimate the production function, considering the differences in technology between the refining furnaces owned by a plant. We find that a more productive plant was likely to adopt the new technology and that the adoption would be expected to occur immediately following the peak of the productivity level achieved with the old technology. The adoption of the new technology primarily accounted not only for the industry's productivity slowdown but also for the industry's remarkable growth.     

Testing the Competitive Environment and the Persistence of Profits Hypotheses

In the present paper I examine Brozen's (1970, 1971a, b, c, 1982) Competitive Environment Hypothesis and Mueller's (1977) Persistence of Profits Hypothesis in the Greek manufacturing industries between 1958 and 1984. The analysis reveals a positive (market power) association between past and current price-cost margins, although a considerable scrambling in the ranks of price-cost margins takes place over time. A high concentration and high barriers to entry sub-sample of markets examined, showed a general reduction in concentration, barriers to entry and a mobility in price-cost margins ranks, indicating that disciplinary competitive forces are also at work within manufacturing markets.     

Labour productivity change: Drivers, business impact and macroeconomic moderators

This paper focuses on the operational drivers of labour productivity changes. We consider two sets of drivers: (a) current working practices and (b) changes in working practices through management programs. The relationship between these two sets of drivers and productivity changes are analysed. We also investigate the importance of productivity growth by looking at the impact of labour productivity changes on business performance changes. Finally, the moderating effects of industry and country on the use of drivers of productivity changes are examined. Data from an international survey, IMSS-IV, are used for the analysis.     

Domestic concentration,foreign trade and economic performance

In a competitive fringe model the impact of concentration on price-cost margins can be shown to be ambiguous. Therefore, looking at the relationship between rates of return and concentration ratios is not sufficient for perceiving collusive elements. In this paper a model is set up that permits discerning collusion more clearly. Additional evidence concerning collusion can be gained by analyzing the influence of exports and imports on price-cost margins. Applying this approach to West Germany yields the result that the collusiveness prevailing in domestic markets has not visibly decreased in spite of a substantial increase in foreign trade.     

The intertemporal stability of the concentration-margins relationship in Dutch and U.S. manufacturing

Factors influencing price-cost margins are investigated using a rich panel data base of the Dutch manufacturing sector. Attention is devoted to the intertemporal stability of the relationship explaining price-cost margins and to a comparison with U.S. results. Our results indicate that isolated cross-section analyses can be misleading. Evidence is provided for similarities and dissimilarities between the U.S. and the Netherlands when explaining price-cost margins. Dutch margins are influenced by industry-specific factors such as sales changes, import competition, capital intensity and operating expenses. Domestic seller concentration, aggregate capacity utilization and export intensity play no distinct roles.This research was sponsored in part by the Economics Research Foundation, which is part of the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. We wish to thank H. W. de Jong, Leo Sleuwaegen, David Audretsch and Aad Kleijweg for their useful comments.     

Benefit or damage? The productivity effects of FDI in the Chinese food industry

We investigate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the total factor productivity of Chinese food firms using firm-level census data between 1998 and 2007 (174,940 sample food firms). We test for within-firm, within-industry, and vertical effects. We find that the effect of FDI on the productivity of Chinese food firms depends significantly on the type of FDI and its countries of origin. FDI from non-HMT (Hong Kong, Macaw and Taiwan) regions can improve the productivity of the invested firm, and also increases the productivity of domestic food firms through vertical industry linkages. However, domestic food firms may be crowded out by non-HMT investment in the same industry. HMT investment can generate positive within-industry productivity spillovers, but negative vertical spillovers. Our findings have immediate implications for policymakers in China, as well as for governments of less developed countries that are formulating foreign investment policies.     

Market size and competition: A “hump-shaped” result

An active empirical literature estimates entry threshold ratios (ETRs), introduced by Bresnahan and Reiss (1991), to learn about the impact of firm entry on competition. We show that in the standard homogeneous goods oligopoly model, there is no monotonic relationship with the price-cost margin, one measure for the strength of competition. Regardless of the shape of demand, the ETR is hump-shaped in the number of active firms. It can also increase with entry in the Salop model of product differentiation or in a game of repeated interactions where collusion is possible. Empirical applications should use caution and only interpret changes in the ratio as indicative of a change in competition when the number of firms is sufficiently large.     

Total factor productivity growth in Uganda’s telecommunications industry

The telecommunication sector is usually thought to be characterized by high productivity growth rates arising from increasing returns to scale. The actual productivity patterns in the sector, however, need to be empirically determined. A panel data set was assembled and a common set of input and output indicators was constructed to support the estimation of the Malmquist Total Factor Productivity index via input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis. A general specification encompassing all available input and output data was employed to obtain the average total factor productivity changes for the sector. Over the study period, there was total factor productivity growth in Uganda’s telecommunications industry, which was mainly due to technical or technological progress as opposed to technical efficiency. These results indicate the existence of a potential for tariff reduction via the X-factor in the price cap formula.     

What Do Unions Do to Productivity? A Meta‐Analysis

The impact of unions on productivity is explored using meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis. It is shown that most of the variation in published results is due to specification differences between studies. After controlling for differences between studies, a negative association between unions and productivity is established for the United Kingdom, whereas a positive association is established for the United States in general and for U.S. manufacturing.