Competition and Regulation in Network Industries: Not an Easy Balance to Strike. Comments on Koski and Kretschmer*

Network industries present several counterintuitive aspects. This peculiarity has attracted particular attention among policymakers, but public intervention has not always been irreproachable. A continuously improving appraisal of network industries tends to allow a better informed policy action and a good balance between otherwise potentially competing policies (competition policy and sector-specific regulation in the first place, but also innovation and standardization policies).     

共享经济视域下竞争政策的完善路径

共享经济作为基于互联网以及智能设备产生的新型经济模式,是以信息技术、定位导航系统、移动支付等创新技术的高度整合为基础,结合共享理念,并付诸商业实践的市场新形态。共享经济的优势在于最大限度发挥闲置资源的价值,加快行业改革的步伐与进程,并通过竞争政策及其机制彰显市场资源配置的最优化和共享经济的价值特征。共享经济相较于传统经济模式具有高技术性、信用依赖性、非占有性的特点,对竞争政策在共享经济领域的适用带来新挑战。在此背景之下传统行业的转型与新型行业或领域的兴起,使整个市场中竞争状况发生巨大变化。从实践角度多方面剖析共享经济企业的实际竞争状况,以共享经济交通行业和共享旅游住宿行业为例归纳共享经济的行业分布情况与企业数量,分别解析共享交通出行行业的平台模式和分时租赁模式的企业数量与产品差异程度,并根据波特竞争模型阐释共享经济行业的整体市场竞争环境。从共享经济的目标功能出发,分析共享经济的定价机制,阐述共享经济中的掠夺性定价行为、横向合并行为、独家交易行为等限制竞争行为的现状和表现形式,挖掘在共享经济视域下三种限制竞争行为规制的难题,提出共享经济视野下竞争政策的具体完善措施:转变竞争政策实施思维,明确竞争政策的优先地位;综合运用竞争政策工具,尤其是公平竞争审查制度的适用;从执法“零容忍”和构建竞争软文化两方面出发,推动竞争执法的常态化;构建合理有效的定价机制,以调动共享经济各方的积极性。     

政策性垄断行业定价机制探析

“棘轮效应”会导致政府对政策性垄断产品客观定价机制的失效,而转型期经济对局部政策性垄断存在无可避免的依赖,如何发现政策性垄断领域的真实成本水平是公共管理中的一大课题。通过政府主导下的投资主体多元化和经营权的竞争性投标相结合,改变单一政府垄断的格局,可以在政策性垄断行业中建立真实成本水平的市场发现机制,使转型期的政策性垄断纳入良性的经济发展轨道。     

Competition and Innovation in Luxembourg

This paper studies the empirical relation between market competition and innovation using Luxembourg’s Structural Business Statistics. The competitive pressure in Luxembourg’s markets is assessed by computing a profit elasticity measure, based on the idea of cost-efficiency. From this, the paper analyses the relation between competition and innovation performance by estimating an equation for the determinants of R&D expenditure. The results show that Luxembourg’s industries are characterised by low levels of competition intensity, especially in markets relevant to competition policy and regulation. The relation between competition and innovation is non-linear and depends crucially on the efficient use of inputs to production. The impact of the distribution of technological efficiency on innovation is assessed by measuring both average technology gap and technology spread. The innovation effort is increasing as industries are closer to the frontier, and decreasing in the technology spread.     

全球贸易竞争对美国反垄断政策的影响

反垄断政策是美国政府最重要的经济政策之一。在贸易全球化时代,有观点认为,反垄断政策不利于美国企业在国际市场上的竞争,甚至认为应当将反垄断政策置于贸易政策之下。但美国政府接受了经济学家迈克尔·波特的理论,坚持激烈的国内市场竞争有助于美国企业国际竞争力形成的观点,反对将反垄断政策作为贸易政策的工具,并在政策取向上一方面对反垄断政策进行调整,使反垄断政策有助于推动企业创新;另一方面积极推动反垄断领域中的国际合作,为美国企业创造更加平等的竞争环境。     

Competition, Market Structure and Job Turnover

Does internationalization mean increased reallocation of employment among plants and thus higher adjustment costs? This paper studies the reallocation of jobs among plants in the Swedish economy 1986–97 using micro data. It turns out that the rate of job turnover is high in industries with high rates of innovation and employment growth, and low in concentrated industries with limited competition. However, we find no evidence for the view that increased openness to international competition would increase job turnover. In fact turnover is lower in export oriented industries where foreign ownership is frequent.     

以制度创新解决中小企业融资“麦克米伦缺口”--基于韩国中小企业银行的研究

我国在政策性融资支持中小企业方面由较多部门掌握资源,各自为政,难以形成合力。政策性金融在中小企业融资领域长期缺位,企业过度依赖商业银行间接融资,是当前中小企业“融资难、融资贵”的一个重要原因。韩国政府从中小企业职能机构设置、机制完善、制度保障、金融支持、产业联动等方面大力扶持中小企业发展,尤其是韩国的政策性金融对中小企业的支持对我国具有借鉴作用。结合中小企业发展面临的融资困境,我国应当通过制度创新,建立两大政策性机构解决中小企业融资难、融资贵问题。     

Reflections on the Relation Between Competition and Innovation

In this paper some reflections are developed on the relation between the organization of markets and innovative activities. The IO (Industrial Organization) predictions often depend crucially on the structural and behavioral characteristics of markets (or industries). To some extent this is also the case for the relation between innovation and competition. But a synthesis of existing work provides nevertheless some robust tendencies, including the predictions that in many cases the aggregate R&D activity is positively or inverted-U related with competition intensity. Clearly this tendency may be useful for positive analysis and policy.     

What does the Chinese market need? An empirical study of the determinants of Chinese imports, 1996–2008

This study provides an in-depth analysis of the determinants of import demand in China through a multilevel approach. Using disaggregated data over 1996–2008 and a dynamic panel model, we find that the Chinese import market is predominantly characterized by quality competition. However, the nature of the competition varies across different industries. In line with theory, quality plays an important role in industries that are characterized by the potential for quality improvement and product differentiation, whereas price is key in industries in which quality and product differences are rather small. Moreover, private consumption expenditure is more influential than other categories of expenditures. Additionally, variables that can influence the relative price of import products, such as the exchange rate, tariffs and the domestic price index, also have an impact on import demand.     

政府采购中保护政策与竞争政策的经济学分析

根据政府采购法的规定,政府采购要贯彻公平竞争的原则,保证提供一个充分竞争的采购市场环境,被称之为政府采购中的竞争政策;同时,政府采购作为政府支出的一种方式,是国家宏观调控的主要手段之一,所以在政府采购法中又规定了,政府采购要保证民族企业的发展,不使其在强大的外国竞争者冲击下破产,被称之为政府采购中的保护政策。这样,当面对国内外供应商的竞争,如何确定政府采购目标的问题,就转化成了如何处理竞争原则和保护政策两者关系的问题。然而,无论政府采购运用哪一种政策其根本目的都是为了提高国内企业的竞争力,增强国家经济实力,所以这就有必要对政府采购中的竞争政策和保护政策进行经济学分析。     

A note on ‘optimal strategic trade policy under asymmetric information’

In [Journal of International Economics 36 (1994) 333], Larry Qiu developed a model of an optimal export promotion policy under asymmetric information. In the Bertrand competition, he shows that the expected welfare is larger under the uniform policy than under the separation-inducing policy. Actually, in this note, we show that no such separating equilibrium exists. Although his main conclusion in the Bertrand competition analysis is unaffected, his reasoning in the paper is misleading.     

Competition in Markets and Competition for Markets

This paper builds on a distinction that is sometimes made between competition in a market and competition for a market. Competition for a market refers to the struggle to create a new market, or to erect a new standard, and it is usually associated with the process of innovation that brings new displacing technologies to market. Competition in a market is the conventional view of competition, and concentrates on the actions of incumbents and imitative entrants in well-established markets. The paper reviews some of the issues that competition for markets raises for anti-trust policy makers, and then asks whether competition for a market is a perfect substitute for competition in a market.     

装备制造业与生产性服务业互动融合财政政策有效性研究

装备制造业与生产性服务业互动融合发展是提升产业创新能力、向产业价值链高端攀升的重要途径。本文基于我国2009-2017年数据,运用系统动力学对装备制造业与生产性服务业互动融合财政政策有效性进行了仿真研究,结果表明现有财政政策的有效性存在异质性:降低企业所得税税率对两产业互动融合起阻碍作用,政府投资型支出政策的有效性较小,现阶段政府科技投入政策无效,而政府教育支出政策对于两产业互动融合的促进作用最为明显。上述结论对相关财政政策优化有参考价值。     

Does a Tougher Competition Policy Reduce or Promote Investment?

The question of how interventions from the Competition Authority (CA) affect investment is not a straightforward one: a tougher competition policy might, by reducing the ability to exert market power, either stimulate firms to invest more to counter the restrictions on their actions, or make firms invest less because of the reduced ability to have a return on investment. This tension is illustrated using two models. In one model investment is own-cost-reducing whereas in the other investment is anti-competitive. Anti-competitive investments are defined as investments that increase competitors’ costs. In both models the optimal level of investment is reduced with a tougher competition policy. Furthermore, while in the case of an anti-competitive investment a tougher authority necessarily leads to lower prices, in the case of a cost-reducing investment the opposite may happen when the impact of the investment on cost is sufficiently high. Results for total welfare are ambiguous in the cost-reducing investment model, whereas in the anti-competitive investment model welfare unambiguously increases due to a tougher competition policy.     

Competition and product innovation in dynamic oligopoly

We investigate the relationship between competition and innovation using a dynamic oligopoly model that endogenizes both the long-run innovation rate and market structure. We use the model to examine how various determinants of competition, such as product substitutability, entry costs, and innovation spillovers, affect firms’ equilibrium strategies for entry, exit, and investment in product quality. We find an inverted-U relationship between product substitutability and innovation: the returns to innovation initially rise for all firms but eventually, as the market approaches a winner-take-all environment, laggards have few residual profits to fight over and give up pursuit of the leader, knowing he will defend his lead. The increasing portion of the inverted-U reflects changes in firm’s investment policy functions, whereas the decreasing portion arises from the industry transiting to states with fewer firms and wider quality gaps. Allowing market structure to be endogenous yields different results compared to extant work that fixes or exogenously varies the market structure.     

Innovation and Competition in the Netherlands: Testing the Inverted-U for Industries and Firms

Competition can be good or bad for innovation by firms. On the one hand it stimulates firms to innovate in order to escape competition, on the other hand it hampers firms to reap additional profits from innovation. The recent literature has embraced a model that describes an inverted-U shape relationship between competition and innovation at the industry-level. With the Price Cost Margin and Profit Elasticity as measures of competition, we find evidence supporting this prediction using industry data from the Dutch National Accounts. Moreover, we test the non-linear relation at the micro-level, with special attention for the role of the distribution of technology within industries. We find evidence that there is a threshold for this ‘technology spread’ at which the (marginal) effect of competition on innovation activity by firms turns from positive to negative.     

Market Incentives for Business Innovation: Results from Canada

Are more competitive industries more innovative? Empirical investigation into various theories of innovation in industrial organization, agency theory, or endogenous growth, make diverse predictions with respect to this long-standing open question in economics. In this paper, we investigate the empirical relationship between competition intensity and firm innovation using a new micro-database containing a large sample of Canadian manufacturing enterprises over the 2000–05 period. Using three different measures of competition intensity, we find evidence that competition intensity is positively related to firm-level expenditures on research and development (R&D) in Canadian manufacturing industries. However, we also find that this relationship is dampened when more firms are further from the technological frontier of their industry. Nevertheless, the results provide evidence for a Schumpeterian interpretation, whereby market power can increase business incentives for innovation when many firms are technological laggards.     

The level of innovation among young innovative companies: the impacts of knowledge-intensive services use,firm characteristics and the entrepreneur attributes

The link between difficulties in obtaining funding and young innovative companies (YICs) has been investigated in numerous studies. YICs also face other barriers such as limited internal resources, access to technology services, etc. Thus, any public policy on innovation for providing financial support to YICs must be accompanied by offering technical assistance and consulting services. The purpose of this study is to determine the characteristics of YICs that enhance their innovation and, specifically, if the use of knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) helps drive innovation. This study also investigates the level of innovation among YICs in relation to the firms’ characteristics (size, sector, competition) and the entrepreneurs’ attributes (age, gender). This study found that the use of KIBS stimulates innovation in YICs.     

政府补贴、国际知识产权保护与企业创新——来自战略性新兴产业上市公司的证据

政府补贴对企业创新的影响存在争议,在美国重点打击中国战略性新兴产业的背景下,补贴这一产业政策的有效性再次引起热议。本文以2012-2017年沪深A股战略性新兴产业上市公司为样本,研究在国际知识产权保护加强的背景下政府补贴对战略性新兴产业创新绩效的影响。研究发现:中国政府实施的补贴政策有利于促进战略性新兴产业创新,但国际知识产权保护加强约束了中国政府补贴的规模和空间,从而抑制了补贴政策对战略性新兴产业创新的激励作用;此外,基于企业和产业异质性视角,国际知识产权保护的加强主要抑制了补贴对国有企业、内资企业和新材料产业创新的促进作用。进一步完善补贴政策和国内的知识产权保护制度,有利于提升中国在构建国际经济新秩序中的话语权。     

论反垄断法与贸易政策的互动关系

反垄断法与贸易政策是国际市场活动中被广泛运用的两个有效工具。如何发挥这两个工具的积极作用,实现国际市场的自由、公平竞争,提高全球消费者福利,是国际社会迫切需要解决的议题之一。通过对贸易政策和反垄断法在维护市场公平竞争秩序方面的各自实现途径的讨论,证明了他们是一种互动和互补关系。在全球化经济环境下,国际性贸易政策虽然得到了不断的完善。但是,国际反垄断法的发展却面临着重大的困难。因此,为真正实现国际贸易的公平自由竞争秩序,制订和完善国内反垄断法并推动反垄断法的国际化,具有相当的紧迫性。