Process innovation and the persistence of monopoly with labour-managed firms

The issue of the persistence of monopoly when at least one labour-managed firm takes part in an auction for a cost-reducing innovation is tackled in this paper. It is shown that (i) when the incumbent is a profit-maximizing firm while the entrant is a labour-managed firm, monopoly persists; (ii) when both firms are labour-managed, monopoly persists only if the technology initially employed by the incumbent is highly inefficient as compared to the new one; and, finally, (iii) when the incumbent is labour-managed while the outsider is a profit seeking agent, then entry always occurs and monopoly changes hands. Received: 3 July 1997 / Accepted: 16 February 1998     

基于供需平衡的卷烟零售户合理化布局规划探讨

目前国内大多数卷烟专卖部门在卷烟零售网点布局规划中所普遍使用的规划听证方案存在较大误差,不利于卷烟市场的健康稳定持续发展。卷烟专卖管理部门应该通过普查和抽样调查获得当地卷烟消费情况的基本数据,并在此基础上结合卷烟供应状况得出各辖区卷烟供需差异,通过对数据和当地实际情况进行分析计算解决该地区是否应该新增持证烟草专卖零售户以及具体增加户数的问题。     

Monopoly,product diversity and welfare

The more homogeneous its customers the easier it is for a monopolist to extract consumer surplus. Offering a range of product varieties (or spatial locations) sorts consumers into groups with similar preferences. The profit opportunities this yields may result in a monopoly providing more product choice than is socially optimal. Nevertheless, monopoly may be socially preferable to a free entry imperfectly competitive equilibrium.     

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE THEORY OF NATURAL MONOPOLY

Abstract. This paper examines two important recent developments in the theory of natural monopoly, or more generally the theory of market structure. The first is a series of papers, involving Baumol with various co-authors, investigating the theory of industry structure, whilst the second is particularly associated with the names of Shaked and Sutton, and the relationship they develop between product differentiation and industry structure. The paper surveys and to some extent contrasts these two new approaches.
Baumol et al. 's contribution is seen to be in the area of clarifying the concept of natural monopoly, refining the definitions of multiproduct costs, and developing a notion of social efficiency applicable to industries where economies of scale are important. Shaked and Sutton employ a new definition of natural monopoly unrelated to market size and utilize information about consumers'income distributions to develop their notion of vertical product differentiation and natural oligopoly.     

Investment decisions in finite-lived monopolies

This paper studies the value and optimal timing for investment in finite-lived monopolies, extending the literature on real option games by considering the cases of random and certain-lived monopolies. Under these settings, firms face the risk of demonopolization, that can occur as a random or a certain event. We show that these new settings produce significantly different results when compared to the canonical monopolistic and duopolistic models. In a certain-lived monopoly, the leader invests sooner than in a duopoly if there is a risk of being preempted, and later than in a monopoly if the leader role is pre-assigned. In a random-lived monopoly, entry occurs somewhere between the duopoly and monopoly cases. Higher uncertainty delays investment in all cases.     

Learning quality through prices and word‐of‐mouth communication

This paper studies the effect of word‐of‐mouth communication on the optimal pricing strategy for new experience goods. I consider a dynamic monopoly model with asymmetric information about product quality, in which consumers learn in equilibrium from both prices and other consumers. The main result is that word‐of‐mouth communication is essential for the existence of separating equilibria, wherein the high‐quality monopolist signals high quality through a low introductory price (lower than the monopoly price), and the low‐quality one charges the monopoly price. The intuition is simple: low prices are costly, and will only be used by firms confident enough that increased experimentation (and therefore communication among consumers) will yield good news about quality and increased future profits. Additional results are the following: for the high‐quality seller, the expected price (quantity) is increasing (decreasing) over time; whereas for the low‐quality one, the opposite is true. Moreover, signaling becomes more difficult when consumers pay less attention to their peers' reports and more attention to past prices. Finally, word‐of‐mouth communication improves consumer welfare.     

A limit to price-increasing competition

Differentiated entry may cause an incumbent firm to increase its price if the entering brand attracts price-sensitive consumers. This paper generalizes from the known cases with one-dimensional and two-dimensional products, showing for a finite number of attributes that there is scope for price-increasing competition, depending on the entrant’s product positioning. The extension is critical because it leads to a reversal that has not been considered. The highest possible duopoly price converges to the monopoly price as the dimensionality increases. Intuitively, when the product is more complex, tastes in the intersection of two brand markets (at any prices) are more specific and less frequent. This thinning of the fringe diminishes the effect of competitive entry.     

天水旅游形象定位分析——突出文化性

一个个性、良好、鲜明的旅游地形象可以形成长期的垄断地位,其垄断力来源于产品与服务的差异化。本文通过分析天水自然地理、人文历史等旅游资源条件,从文化特质、旅游功能、市场定位入手,为天水旅游形象的定位提出建议。     

Legislation and the American Dialysis Industry:

A bstract Monopoly power in the dialysis industry in the United States is linked to Public Lau'92-603 (section 2991) of the Social Security Amendments of 1972 under which 90 percent of all patients with end-stage renal disease became eligible for Medicare coverage In effect, Congress spawned a new government enterprise by removing the constraining factor of price to the consumer and legalizing government-subsidized monopoltes in renal care which were empowered with the right to supply renal care services within designated areas without competition Those who suffer from renal insufficiency encounter monopoly on the supply side of the product (dialysis units) market, and the labor market (kidney specialists) since outside nephrologists are not permitted to treat patients'assigned' to "closed staff" units     

Product Differentiation, Strategic Divisionalization, and Persistence of Monopoly

This paper analyzes the strategic incentive of oligopolists to create autonomous rival divisions when products are differentiated. We consider a two-stage game where firms choose the number of autonomous divisions in the first stage and all the divisions engage in Cournot competition in the second. It is shown that product differentiation ensures the existence of an interior subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE), and the equilibrium number of divisions increases with the degree of substitution among products and the number of firms. Further, if divisions are allowed to divide further, they always will, which leads to total rent dissipation. Thus, parent firms have incentives to unilaterally restrict their divisions from further dividing. In the free-entry equilibrium, it is found that the possibility of setting up autonomous divisions is a natural barrier to entry. Incumbents may persistently earn abnormally high profits. In the cases where product differentiation is difficult, the only pure-strategy free-entry SPNE is the monopoly outcome even if the entry cost is relatively low.     

基于拍卖的垄断型产品供应链的博弈分析

论文研究了基于拍卖交易的垄断型产品供应链中卖方和买方的博弈问题,成交价格同时取决于卖方向拍卖市场的供货数量和买方向拍卖市场的竞拍数量。博弈结果显示,在垄断供应的情况下,博弈的纳什均衡将会是买卖双方都不通过拍卖渠道来进行交易,只有在非常极端的条件下可以达成供货和竞拍等量的均衡。最后,论文引入一个新卖方作为买方参与拍卖后的补货来源,得到的新均衡解能使原买卖双方的收益提高,从而说明单纯的拍卖并不总是最好的交易方式,多渠道的销售方式有时更能保障买卖双方的利益。     

Competition and market power in the European airline industry: 1976–90

In this paper, we study the market power of European airlines in an oligopoly structure with product differentiation for the period 1976–1990 and test the monopoly hypothesis (Captain, 1993). The paper analyzes the level of competition among eight major European airlines and finds little evidence for market power in the industry over that period. One of our main findings is that the high prices in Europe are not entirely due to the bilateral agreements (leading to possible monopoly power), but rather are a result of very high cost structures in the industry. These results are broadly in agreement with those of Roeller and Sickles (1994) which analyzes these issues in the European Industry by estimating a structural, two-stage game. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regulating a Manager‐controlled Natural Monopoly with Unknown Costs

We study the regulation of a manager‐controlled natural monopoly with unknown costs, borrowing from Baron and Myerson (BM) (1982), where the monopoly is controlled by the owner. We consider the case where the regulator can tax the owner as well as the case where she cannot. We find that the optimal price schedule generally lies below the one in the BM model and that it can be as low as the marginal cost if the compensation parameter is sufficiently small and the regulator cannot tax the monopoly owner. We also identify the cases where the monopoly owner prefers to delegate the control to a manager. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Better Late than Early: Vertical Differentiation in the Adoption of a New Technology

After the initial breakthrough in the research phase of R&D, a new product undergoes a process of change, improvement, and adaptation to market conditions. We model the strategic behavior of firms in this development phase. We emphasize that a key dimension to this competition is the innovation that leads to product differentiation and quality improvement. In a duopoly model with a single adoption choice, we derive endogenously the level and diversity of product innovations. We demonstrate the existence of equilibria in which one firm enters early with a low-quality product while the other continues to develop the technology and eventually markets a high-quality good. In such an equilibrium, no monopoly rent is dissipated and the later innovator makes more profits. Incumbent firms may well be the early innovators, contrary to the predictions of the "incumbency inertia" hypothesis.     

Leveraging of Reputation through Umbrella Branding: The Implications for Market Structure

The Klein–Leffler model explains how fear of reputation loss can induce firms to produce high‐quality experience goods. This paper shows that reputation can be leveraged across products via umbrella branding, but only by a firm with a monopoly on at least one product. Such a firm may be able to capture a market by using umbrella branding to make high quality credible at a lower price than the incumbent competitive firms. If monopolists compete for this capture, consumers are left better off than if the market remained competitive, in some cases even though the price increases.     

A model of the firm in time and space

We consider a multi-plant monopoly that sells to markets which are geographically separated and which stores product over time via an inventory capability. It is assumed that plant average production cost is U-shaped and that, if the output of a plant's production run were sold to a single market at only one point in time, the plant would operate on the falling portion of its average cost curve. Hence, it is in the interest of the firm to aggregate markets, both spatially and temporally, to lower average production cost. We develop the optimal joint interplant spacing-inventory policy. We also consider the effects changes in freight costs, storage costs, and interest charges have on the firm's optimal policy.     

Optimal monopoly market area spanning in multidimensional commodity spaces

A monopoly firm locates in multidimensional product characteristics' space by setting a price that maximizes its profits. The monopoly market area (MMA) it serves strikes the happy medium between lower price and larger MMA, assuming absence of price discrimination, by setting the price at the MMA margins. The MMA takes different shapes, such as hyperspheres or hypercubes, depending on how customers perceive the product distance from their ideal tastes. Commodity space dimensionality, a measure of customer taste elaboration, has a robust effect on optimization: the optimal MMA stretch increases and price decreases with dimensionality, with different customer sensitivity patterns in place. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

知识产权保护与信息资源共享问题研究

进入21世纪以来,随着科技的不断进步与发展,网络科技不断革新,直播行业兴起,信息化浪潮席卷全球。信息资源共享与知识产权保护的矛盾日益突出。信息资源作为人们认识和改造世界的精神产物,是全人类共有的资源,应该为全人类所共享。知识产权作为人类的智力产物,法律赋予了知识产权合法的垄断性,这就造成信息资源的共享性与知识产权保护的专有性、排他性的矛盾长期存在。论文根据当今社会的现状,剖析知识产权保护与信息资源共享之间的矛盾冲突,提出解决矛盾的对策与建议。     

Vertical Foreclosure, Technological Choice, and Entry on the Intermediate Market

This paper analyzes the profitability of vertical integration for an upstream monopoly facing a potential competitor. We show that it depends on the technology used by the firm when it integrates. We distinguish two types of technologies: standard technologies, used by nonintegrated firms, and nonstandard technologies, reserved for integrated firms and implying the complete foreclosure of nonintegrated firms. Vertical integration with the adoption of a nonstandard technology dominates vertical integration with the adoption of a standard technology and is profitable, as long as the degree of competition in the downstream industry is sufficiently low.     

Vertical Foreclosure, Technological Choice, and Entry on the Intermediate Market

This paper analyzes the profitability of vertical integration for an upstream monopoly facing a potential competitor. We show that it depends on the technology used by the firm when it integrates. We distinguish two types of technologies: standard technologies, used by nonintegrated firms, and nonstandard technologies, reserved for integrated firms and implying the complete foreclosure of nonintegrated firms. Vertical integration with the adoption of a nonstandard technology dominates vertical integration with the adoption of a standard technology and is profitable, as long as the degree of competition in the downstream industry is sufficiently low.