Vertical technology transfer and the welfare implications of patent protection

Significant amount of vertical technology transfer occurs between developed and developing-country firms, and many trading companies from developing countries create competition in the developed countries, yet the literature on intellectual property rights did not pay considerable attention to these aspects. In a Cournot oligopoly with vertical technology transfer, we show that patent protection in the developing country raises developed-country welfare if the following three conditions hold together: (i) patent protection in the developing country deters entry in the final goods market, (ii) the marginal cost difference between the incumbent and the entrant final goods sellers is sufficiently small, and (iii) the marginal cost difference between the incumbent and the entrant developing-country producers is sufficiently high. We also show that patent protection in the developing country always creates higher developing-country welfare if no developing-country firm enters the final goods market. We also discuss the implications of Bertrand competition on our results.     

RJV FORMATION AND STRATEGIC ENTRY ACCOMMODATION*

This article examines the relationship between cost reduction and public goods effect of research joint ventures (RJVs) and strategic entry deterrence. R&D is process innovation à la Kamien, Muller and Zang (1992 ) and R&D cost sharing between the incumbent and the entrant in a RJV can be asymmetric per Long and Soubeyran (2002 ). It is found that conforming with the conventional wisdom, the incumbents prefer to form RJV to deter entry when the entrant is very inefficient. However, if the entrant is moderately inefficient, it is a better choice for the incumbent to accommodate entry by forming a RJV with it. In contrast, if the entrant is very efficient, then the equilibrium RJV structure depends on the magnitude of spillover effect: it is better to deter entry in the case of high spillover effect.     

Pricing Access to a Monopoly Input

What price should downstream entrants pay a vertically integrated incumbent monopoly for use of its assets? Courts, legislators, and regulators have at times mandated that incumbent monopolies lease assets required for the production of a retail service to entrants in efforts to increase the competitiveness of retail markets. This paper compares two rules for pricing such monopoly inputs: marginal cost pricing (MCP) and generalized efficient component pricing rule (GECPR). The GECPR is not a fixed price, but is a rule that determines the input price to be paid by the entrant from the entrant's retail price. Comparing the retail market equilibrium under MCP and GECPR, the GECPR leads to lower equilibrium retail prices. If the incumbent is less efficient than the entrant, the GECPR also leads to lower production costs than does the MCP rule. If the incumbent is more efficient than the entrant, however, conditions may exist in which MCP leads to lower production costs than does the GECPR. The analysis is carried out assuming either Bertrand competition, quantity competition, or monopolistic competition between the incumbent and entrant in the downstream market.     

Foreign competition and social efficiency of entry

We consider social efficiency of firm-entry in the presence of foreign competition. If the labour markets are competitive, entry is insufficient for the domestic country if the transportation cost is low and the marginal costs of the domestic firms are sufficiently higher than the marginal cost of the foreign firm. In the presence of a domestic labour union, entry is always socially insufficient for the domestic country. Hence, the anti-competitive entry-regulation policy may not be justified in an industry facing foreign competition, and it may depend on the transportation cost, the marginal cost difference between the firms and the domestic labour market structure.     

The Marginal Costs and Benefits of Redistributing Income and the Willingness to Pay for Status

The effect of status on aggregate welfare is ambiguous for marginal reforms that redistribute income. If average consumption falls, the change in relative consumption increases household utility but reinforces the decrease in household labor supply, raising welfare cost. For parameterizations of the model developed here, reforms which lower average consumption increase aggregate welfare. Numerical calculations show that status increases marginal welfare cost and marginal net benefit for a demogrant reform. Redistributing to high income households may increase aggregate welfare depending on the definition of average consumption and if the willingness to pay for status increases with income.     

Utility Regulation and Risk Allocation: The Roles of Marginal Cost Pricing and Futures Markets

The effects on consumer welfare of requiring a utility facing cost or demand risk to use either a fixed retail price or marginal cost pricing are assessed. With marginal cost pricing and cost volatility an efficient futures market allows consumer welfare to be at least as high in every state as with the fixed price. With demand risk marginal cost pricing can benefit the consumer in every state without harming the firm if the profit difference is transferred to the consumer. A futures market can act as a partial replacement for the transfer.     

Strategic sourcing for entry deterrence and tacit collusion

By sourcing key intermediate goods to a potential entrant, an incumbent firm can credibly and observably commit to an intense post-entry competition, thereby deterring the entry. At the same time, a collusive effect exists, whereby the entrant’s loss from staying out of the final-good market is compensated through their sourcing transaction. We find that entry-deterring sourcing in general has ambiguous effect on social welfare. However, there exist scenarios where it enhances not only social welfare, but also consumers’ surplus.     

Corporate social responsibility and market entry

Is the decision of firms to pursue social interest and promote social progress philanthropic or motivated by strategic reasons? Using a simple Spence–Dixit entry model game with homogeneous goods, this paper studies the possible anticompetitive effect of the adoption of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the form of “consumer friendliness” (i.e., firms’ attention to the welfare of consumers). It is shown that, when the market becomes contestable, the incumbent can select to adopt CSR to hamper to a greater extent the potential entrant, regardless of its choice to engage in CSR activities. In other words, CSR can become a strategic barrier to entry.     

Entry regulation and social welfare with an integer problem

This paper elaborates on Salop (1979) who showed that the number of firms at free-entry equilibrium is excessive from the viewpoint of social welfare (excess-entry theorem). This paper considers an integer problem of the number of firms entering the market. We find that the excess-entry theorem does not hold true if the marginal production cost is increasing, while it holds true if the marginal production cost is constant. This result warns against the use of the excess-entry theorem for rationalizing entry regulation such as the notorious Japanese Large-Scaled Retail Act restricting the new entry of retailers.     

Privatization,Underpricing, and Welfare in the Presence of Foreign Competition

We analyze privatization in a differentiated oligopoly setting with a domestic public firm and foreign profit‐maximizing firms. In particular, we examine pricing below marginal cost by the public firm, the optimal degree of privatization, and the relationship between privatization and foreign ownership restrictions. When market structure is exogenous, partial privatization of the public firm improves welfare by reducing public sector losses. Surprisingly, even at the optimal level of privatization, the public firm's price lies strictly below marginal cost, resulting in losses. Our analysis also reveals a potential conflict between privatization and investment liberalization (i.e., relaxing restrictions on foreign ownership) in the short run. With endogenous market structure (i.e., free entry of foreign firms), partial privatization improves welfare through an additional channel: more foreign varieties. Furthermore, at the optimal level of privatization, the public firm's price lies strictly above marginal cost and earns positive profits.     

Pricing inputs to induce efficient Make-or-Buy decisions

We investigate input pricing regimes that induce efficient Make-or-Buy decisions by entrants when there is constant returns in the production of the input(s) and simultaneous noncooperative price competition in downstream retail markets. Necessary and sufficient conditions for efficient Make-or-Buy decisions are derived. The necessary condition shows that input prices are relevant for Make-or-Buy decisions except under restrictive and often unverifiable assumptions on the demand structure, and that the least informationally-demanding way to ensure efficient Make-or-Buy decisions is to price inputs at marginal cost provided changes in the entrant’s cost have a “normal” effect on the entrant’s profit. The conditions also show that pricing the incumbent’s input at the entrant’s marginal cost always ensures efficient Make- or-Buy decisions. The extent to which input prices can depart from marginal cost while still inducing efficient Make-or-Buy decisions increases with the efficiency differential between the incumbent and entrant and with the demand displacement ratio.      

The Collective Household, Household Production and Efficiency of Marginal Reforms

Most research on the welfare properties of taxes employs the unitary model of the household, ignoring household production. A simple model provides expressions for the changes in individual utility given marginal reforms to government policy. It is shown that the burden of a higher tax on household goods falls on the household member that consumes more than they produce or purchase. Numerical calculations show that price substitution (complementarity) between home and market labor increases (decreases) aggregate efficiency costs of a marginal redistribution of income without impacting the intra-household distribution of utility changes. Modeling household goods as public versus private can alter the distributional consequences of marginal reforms.     

Cost incentives for doctors: A double-edged sword

If doctors take the costs of treatment into account when prescribing medication, their objectives differ from their patients' objectives because the patients are insured. This misalignment of interests hampers communication between patient and doctor. Giving cost incentives to doctors increases welfare if (i) the doctor's examination technology is sufficiently good or (ii) (marginal) costs of treatment are high enough. If the planner can costlessly choose the extent to which doctors take costs into account, he will opt for less than 100%. Optimal health care systems should implement different degrees of cost incentives depending on type of disease and/or doctor.     

Supply function competition in a mixed electric power market

In this paper, we present a mixed oligopoly model where electric power generators compete in supply functions in a liberalized market. A former monopolist, the state‐owned generator, is assumed to be (partially) privatized. First, we obtain that there is a relationship between privatization and the number of electric power generators concerning the level of consumer surplus and total welfare. Indeed, a fully state‐owned generator is socially optimal, lowering private generators' profits and enhancing consumer surplus; that is, if the degree of privatization decreases, consumer surplus increases compensating the damage imposed on generators' profits. Second, as the number of generators increases, full privatization may provide similar levels of consumer surplus and social welfare than those observed in a mixed oligopoly. Moreover, it is also obtained that price‐cost margins increase as marginal cost increases. Overall, our results suggest that the state‐owned generator should be privatized when entry barriers are low enough, and competitiveness is enhanced. Otherwise, a state‐owned generator may protect consumers, enhancing consumer surplus.     

Tax evasion and competition

Using a Cournot oligopoly model with an endogenous number of firms and evasion of indirect taxes, we show that more intense competition may have the negative side effect of increasing tax evasion, thereby, lowering public revenues and welfare. This will be the case if market entry costs decrease. A similar result will hold if marginal production costs fall and demand is either weakly concave, or convex and inelastic. The result of more competition, less evasion and higher public revenues will be obtained if (a) marginal production costs fall and demand is convex and elastic or (b) the demand elasticity increases. As a policy implication, we prove that tax enforcement should be intensified if there is a negative trade‐off between competition and evasion.     

Privatization of state holding corporations

Many countries have privatized part of their state holding corporations in recent years. However, the literature on this issue has analyzed mainly the privatization of uniproduct public firms. We consider a state holding corporation with two plants that may produce complement or substitute goods. Assuming that private firms are more efficient than the state holding corporation we find the following: If the marginal cost of the state corporation is low, it is not privatized either if goods are substitutes or if they are complements. However, if the marginal cost of the state corporation is high the two plants of the state holding corporation are sold to a single private investor if goods are complements, and to different investors if goods are substitutes. If goods are close substitutes and the marginal cost of the state corporation takes an intermediate value only one plant is privatized. We extend the model to consider that firms are equally efficient, that they face quadratic cost functions and that there are n uniplant private firms producing each good. We find two differences with the previous result: The government never privatizes just one plant of the state corporation, and when goods are complements the two plants of the state corporation are sold to different investors if n is high.     

经济增长模型中Solow余值的研究

通过对生产函数的前提条件的理论分析,证明了在完全竞争条件下,“余值”不存在,Solow的假设性前提错误,但“余值”存在于现实之中的非完全竞争条件下。“余值”是内生的,不是外生的,其取值范围为[0,1/(α+β)],随价格偏离边际成本的程度δ增大而增大。狭义A的确切涵义既不是“知识进步”,也不是“智能进步”,更不是“全要素生产率”,而是与k,L密切关联,由市场的不完全竞争程度通过价格偏离边际成本,影响k,L的投入,进而影响α,β,最后影响经济增长,具有动态和影响“全方位”特征的变量。     

HOME MARKET EFFECTS IN THE CHAMBERLINIAN–RICARDIAN WORLD

According to conventional home market effects, free trade tends to shrink the market share for a smaller economy in differentiated manufacturing goods, and in the extreme, leads to a complete hollowing out of the industry. Departing from the original Helpman–Krugman modelling assumptions behind the home market effects, we introduce a technology advantage in terms of the difference in fixed cost and/or marginal cost between trading partners and prove that home market effects will be offset and even reverse if a small economy has better technology than another country. With a higher elasticity of substitution, the marginal cost advantage becomes more important if it is to dominate the home market effect. We also show that even with an identical country size, the intra‐industry trade addressed in the existing literature may not occur; it will occur only if the technology differential lies within a certain range that is positively affected by the level of transport cost.     

How the source of the entrant's advantage limits entry‐deterring tying

I revisit a simple model of entry‐deterring tying—example 1 from Whinston's (1990) seminal paper—but allow the potential entrant to have either a cost advantage or a willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) advantage relative to the incumbent. I show that, compared to the usual case in which the potential entrant is cost‐advantaged, tying is less effective against an entrant with a WTP advantage because an entrant with a large WTP advantage may be able to induce the buyer to buy both the tied bundle and the entrant's product. I also show that tying but failing to deter entry can be less costly when facing an entrant with a WTP advantage than when facing an entrant with a cost advantage. For a firm facing uncertainty about, for example, the entrant's entry costs, this makes tying a more attractive entry deterrence strategy against a WTP‐advantaged entrant. These results shed light on the important policy question of which markets are most likely to be susceptible to entry‐deterring tying.