Optimality and Natural Selection in Markets

We ask if natural selection in markets favors profit-maximizing firms and, if so, is there a difference between the predictions of models which assume all firms are profit maximizers and the predictions of models which explicitly take account of population dynamics in the market. We show that market selection favors profit maximizing firms, but we also show that the long-run behavior of evolutionary market models is nonetheless not consistent with equilibrium models based on the profit-maximization hypothesis. Dynamic equilibrium paths with market selection are not Pareto optimal, nor even asymptotically optimal. The discrepancy arises because the dynamics created by firm evolution causes prices to vary over time and the resulting dynamical system need not have stable steady states.     

Can Allowing to Trade Permits Enhance Welfare in Mixed Oligopoly?

We compare the effects of tradable emission permits (TEP) and non-tradable emission permits (NTEP) in a mixed oligopoly, where public firms and private firms compete in a product market. If all technologies and initial endowments of emission permits are symmetric among public and private firms and if the emission constraint is exogenous and binding, social welfare is greater (resp. smaller) under TEP than under NTEP when the weight of social welfare in each public firm's objective function and the degree of convexity of the production cost function and that of the abatement cost function are small (resp. large).     

THE SCOPE FOR NON‐PROFIT OBJECTIVES IN A MIXED OLIGOPOLY UNDER INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

We ask how the scope for non‐profit objectives in a state‐owned enterprise (SOE) in a mixed oligopoly changes because of competition from firms in another country. There is no change if costs and demand are given, unless the trade partner is a low‐cost country. However, the scope for non‐profit objectives is limited by the country's relative size if wages are market‐clearing and if workers and firms are stationary, because of reduced competitiveness caused by higher real wage rates. The total surplus is then not affected by the actions of the SOE. International trade does not otherwise reduce the scope for its non‐profit objectives if workers and firms are mobile, but productivity differences might require restrictions in order to avoid a complete relocation of the workforce in either country.     

Emission taxes for genuine altruistic firms

This article develops a theoretical model that explores firms' abatement choices. The main results are: First, in a market comprised of a not sufficiently large number of heterogeneous firms always there exists a subset of firms that are willing to undertake abatement activities, if their marginal altruistic cost of emissions is positive. Second, a low emission tax induces abatement when a firm is egoistic or if its altruistic cost of emissions has a concave structure. In contrast, if the firms’ altruistic cost of emissions has a convex structure, then intermediate emission taxes are required. Third, the effect of firms’ altruistic cost of emissions on the emission tax that induce the socially optimum abatement is also conditional on the genuine altruistic preferences and finally, the social planner has an incentive to impose a Pigouvian emission tax when firms are profit maximizers. Otherwise, a lower tax suffices.     

Hedging and temporal permit issuances in cap-and-trade programs: The Market Stability Reserve under risk aversion

Cap-and-trade programs such as the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) expose firms to considerable risks, to which the firms can respond with hedging. We develop an intertemporal stochastic equilibrium model to analyze the implications of hedging by risk-averse firms. We show that the resulting time-varying risk premium depends on the size of the permit bank. Applying the model to the EU ETS, we find that hedging can lead to a U-shaped price path, because prices initially fall due to negative risk premiums and then rise as the hedging demand declines. The Market Stability Reserve (MSR) reduces the permit bank and thus, increases the hedging value of the permits. This offers an explanation for the recent price hike, but also implies that prices may decline in the future due to more negative risk premiums. In addition, we find higher permit cancellations through the MSR than previous analyses, which do not account for hedging.     

Tradeable Emission Permits Regulations in the Presence of Imperfectly Competitive Product Markets: Welfare Implications

In the present paper, we analyse the interaction of a competitive market for emission permits with an oligopolistic product market. It is well known that a competitive permits market achieves the cost minimizing distribution of abatement effort among the polluting firms for a given reduction in emissions. However, when the product market is oligopolistic, it may redistribute production inefficiently among firms. It has been suggested that this inefficiency can outweigh the gains obtained from using emission permits instead of command and control. Although this argument is clearly correct under full information, it is shown in the present paper that it reverses under incomplete information. In particular, it is shown that when tradeable emission permits are specified according to the standard textbook example, they yield higher social welfare than the command and control regulation.     

A Note on Market Power in an Emission Permits Market with Banking

In this paper, we investigate the effect of market power on equilibrium path of an emission permits market in which firms can bank current permits for use in later periods. In particular, we study the market equilibrium for a large (potentially dominant) firm and competitive fringe with rational expectations. We characterize the equilibrium solution for different permits allocations and discuss the large firm’s stock-holding constraints needed for credible market manipulation.     

Optimal Policy with Tradable and Bankable Pollution Permits: Taking the Market Microstructure into Account

This paper analyzes how the way emission permits are traded—their market microstructure—affects the optimal policy to be adopted by the environmental agency. The microstructure used is one of a quote driven market type, which characterizes many financial markets. Market makers act as intermediaries for trading the permits by setting an ask price and a bid price. The possibility of bank permits is also introduced in our dynamic two‐period model. We consider two models whether the market makers are perfectly informed about the technology of the producers or not. When the market makers have complete information, the equilibrium price of permits is the same as if the market is walrasian. When they are imperfectly informed, they may set a positive spread between bid and ask permit prices, which creates some inefficiency as the marginal abatement costs of polluters do not equalize. By allowing more flexibility in the use of the permits, banking may reduce the spread. Moreover, it may introduce price rigidities due to intertemporal arbitrage. In this framework, the circumstances under which banking should be allowed or not depend crucially on the evolution of the marginal willingness to pay for the environment.     

Measuring efficiency when competitive prices aggregate differences in product quality and risk

In perfectly competitive markets with homogenous goods, prices aggregate inputs and outputs into a money metric that allows production plans and, hence, firms to be ranked by their profitability. Standard techniques of efficiency measurement use this metric to estimate cost and profit frontiers that identify “best-practice” production, conditioned on these exogenous prices. However, when prices vary due to differences among firms in the quality of outputs and inputs and in how asymmetric informational problems are resolved, both quality and the production of information can be decision variables of the firm, and prices will have endogenous components linked to production decisions. For example, in banking, prices of financial inputs and outputs are linked to credit quality and, hence, to risk and, thus, aggregate both inputs and outputs and their risk characteristics as well as reflect how informational asymmetries in credit markets are ameliorated. This paper argues that these cases pose two serious problems for the standard techniques of efficiency measurement: (1) they underestimate inefficiency because, in conditioning on prices, they fail to account for the effects of suboptimal pricing strategies on profitability; and (2) in ignoring how production plans and pricing strategies affect market-priced risk, the standard techniques neglect the effects of different pricing strategies on the discount rate, on expected profit and, hence, on market value. Two alternative techniques that do not condition their frontiers on prices and that account for risk are described to show how they measure the efficiency of different pricing strategies as well as production plans. These two alternative models for measuring efficiency are employed to study how differences in pricing strategies affect the efficiency and market value of highest-level bank holding companies in the United States in 1994.     

Cross-Industry Emission Permits Trading

The present paper examines the effectiveness of emission permits trading across industries. We find that, while permits trading in a competitive environment minimizes costs of compliance, it also enhances product market imperfections. We also find that a standard-setting regulation yields superior welfare results if policy makers have able information. Standard setting allows policy makers the flexibility of taking into account the existing imperfections in each industry. Although not surprising, this result has important policy implications in situations in which policy makers consider establishing permits trading between publicly owned dominant polluters and other industrial polluters. Since policy makers have able information on publicly-owned firms, it might be welfare improving to directly control emissions of the dominant publicly-owned polluters. Given that many of the major polluters in the real world are large firms in heavily concentrated industries many of which are also regulated, our result warrants policy makers' attention.     

The determinants of privatization prices: evidence from Turkey

This paper analyses the determinants of privatization prices in a multi-industry study using a sample of 68 recently privatized firms from Turkey. Results show that revenue and market characteristics are significant determinants of privatization prices while current cost and profit indicators are not. It is argued that potential buyers regard these state firms as inefficient, therefore do not take into consideration their current costs and profits in determining their value. When the dependent variable is altered by dividing the firm's privatization price by the firm's sales (revenues), it is found that sales-adjusted privatization prices are responsive to firms profit margins. However, this result does not hold when the sample is restricted to a single industry. Profit margins along with other profitability and firm efficiency measures are no longer significant determinants of sales-adjusted privatization prices in the cement industry analysis. Unexploited production opportunities measured by capacity utilization ratios, and complete private ownership resume a more important role.     

Explaining the Concentration-Profitability Paradox

This paper explains an empirical paradox which is often found, but generally ignored: a significant negative econometric relationship between profitability and market share concentration. The phenomenon can appear when there is a negative correlation between market share and costs—for example due to economies of scale. I show that concentration becomes an indicator for the cost competitiveness of direct rivals within an industry. Profitability of a given firm is undermined if price correlates positively with average industry costs (Classical natural prices) and frictions like sunk costs make an industry exit expensive for firms. This idea also explains the frequent findings of highly persistent profit rate differentials.     

Privatization when the public firm is as efficient as private firms

The literature on mixed oligopoly shows that when production costs are quadratic the public firm is privatized if the competition in the product market is high enough. Similarly, when the public firm is less efficient than private firms and the marginal costs of production are constant, the government privatizes the public firm if its efficiency is low enough. In this paper we analyze this issue assuming that the public firm maximizes the weighted sum of consumer surplus, private profit and the profit of the public firm. If all firms have the same marginal cost of production we obtain that for some value of parameters the government does not privatize the public firm regardless of how many private firms are competing in the product market. We also obtain that the consumer surplus can be lower in the mixed oligopoly than in the private oligopoly.     

Multi-Sector Model of Tradable Emission Permits

This paper presents a multi-sector model of tradable emission permits, which includes oligopolistic and perfectly competitive industries. The firms in oligopolistic industries are assumed to exercise market power in the tradable permit market as well as in the product market. Specifically, we examine the effects of the initial permit allocation on the equilibrium outcomes, focusing on the interaction among these product and permit markets. It is shown that raising the number of initial permits allocated to one firm in an oligopolistic industry increases the output produced by that firm. Under certain conditions, raising a “clean” (less-polluting) firm’s share of the initial permits can lead to reductions in both the product and permit prices. We discuss criteria for the socially optimal allocation of initial permits, considering the trade-off between production inefficiency and consumer benefit.     

Using the allocation of emission permits for strategic trade purposes

We show that the presence of transaction costs in emission permit markets challenges the common presumption that grandfathering permits corresponds to lump-sum transfers with no strategic effects on output. Fixed transaction-costs influence firms’ decision to participate in the permits market, while variable transaction-costs affect firms’ output choice by creating a wedge between buyers’ and sellers’ opportunity cost of using permits. Thus, permit grandfathering can be used as a strategic trade instrument even when firms are price takers in the permit markets. Grandfathered permits differ from subsidies in that the stimulus they provide is bounded exogenously and rather limited.     

Effects of vertical integration on price and volume: An empirical inquiry

A simple model with two stages of production is used for deriving some empirically testable hypotheses. Firms (two upstream and two downstream) in the industry are either vertically integrated or not, hence the industry has three alternative patterns: Complete unintegrated, partially integrated, or fully integrated.Final good prices, outputs and profits of firms are different in each integration pattern but what is optimal can not be stated (i.e., pay-offs are much too complicated in order to solve the sub-game equilibrium).The essential feature of the model is that there are external markets for the intermediate inputs. Hence input trade between the four firms/divisions need not balance since excess supply or demand is traded at the external market. With this feature purely downstream exogenous shocks have no effect on upstream pricing nor production decisions if all four firms are unintegrated. Such exogenous shocks have non-zero effects if at least one firm is vertically integrated. There are also other dissimilarities in comparative statics of each industry integration pattern.An indirect method to test the effects of vertical integration on price and volume is presented and empirically tested. Depending on the vertical integration pattern of an industry exogenous shocks have dissimilar effects on prices and outputs of the final and intermediate good. A four equations system is estimated by using Finnish forest industry firm data. Final good demand rise has a reducing effect on both paper and pulp prices. Stumpage prices (upstream marginal costs) have a negative impact on paper and pulp production and a positive impact on prices. These effects from upstream (downstream) stage into downstream (upstream) market should not occur when all firms are unintegrated.This is a revised version of a paper which was presented at seminars at Brussels, Turku, Vienna, and Stuttgart. I would like to thank seminar participants (specially Frank Schmid) and anonymous referees for helpful comments. Financial support from the Marcus Wallenberg Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

The Influence of a Neighbouring Market on Product Qualities and Prices

This paper analyses a model of vertical product differentiation in which there is a primary market with two firms and a secondary market with no firms. Consumers in the secondary market incur a cost when purchasing the product from the primary market. The firms sequentially choose product quality and then simultaneously choose prices. Firm 1 always chooses the maximum quality, while firm 2's quality and the prices depend on the cost. Also, the cost determines which firm(s), if either, serves the secondary market. It is shown that the firms and the consumers of each market prefer different levels of costs.     

INSUFFICIENT ENTRY OF EMPLOYEE‐CONTROLLED FIRMS IN A FREE‐ENTRY OLIGOPOLY

This study is a theoretical examination of whether employee‐controlled firms (ECFs) enter a free‐entry oligopolistic market excessively or insufficiently, from the viewpoint of welfare maximization. The excess entry theorem is well known in oligopoly theory. According to this theorem, a greater number of profit‐maximizing firms enter a free‐entry oligopolistic market than is optimal for welfare maximization. We demonstrate the possibility that insufficient entry arises when ECFs compete in a free‐entry market. In particular, we show that if both the demand and cost functions are convex, insufficient ECF entry necessarily occurs. Our results suggest that competition among firms seeking purposes other than profit might lead to insufficient entry because differences in competing firms’ objectives affect the intensity of market competition.     

On the efficiency of environmental instruments in a spatial economy

This paper develops an efficiency criterion to evaluate environmental policy instruments in a spatial economy. We call an environmental policy regime at the regional level efficient if it guarantees not only an efficient distribution of emission permits within a region, but also an efficient locational pattern of mobile firms across the regions of a federation. Using marketable pollution rights or emission taxes, efficiency in this broad sense can only be achieved if revenues of regional environmental agencies are not transferred to regional firms. Direct controls neither support an efficient allocation of emission rights within a region nor locational efficiency of firms.     

Selection effects in auctions for monopoly rights

We demonstrate that auctioning market licenses may result in higher market prices than assigning them via more random allocation mechanisms. When future market profit is uncertain, winning an auction is like winning a lottery ticket. If firms differ in risk attitudes, auctions select the least risk-averse firm, which, in turn, set a higher price (or a higher quantity, in case quantity is the decision variable) in the marketplace than an average firm.