Taxing a monopolist

We consider a simple, self-financing and informationally undemanding scheme to reduce the deadweight loss due to a monopolist's market power. Essentially, we propose taxing the monopolist and applying the tax revenue to generate a public demand for his output. It turns out that a favorable scenario for such a reform to generate an ‘efficiency increase’ (i.e. to increase total output) is an elasticity of market demand with an absolute value of less than 3 (a seemingly ‘realistic’ condition). We also consider the case for the implementation of the first best, and compare specific and ad-valorem taxes as a way to finance the public demand.     

Regulating a multi-product monopolist

The purpose of the present paper is to construct a regulatory scheme that serves to correct suboptimal behavior of a multi-product monopolist in a situation of doubly asymmetric information, where the regulator cannot observe the monopolist's cost structure and consumers' preference while the monopolist cannot identify consumer types. We construct a tax scheme that induces the monopolist to offer socially optimal qualities to all types of consumers and discuss some interesting features of the scheme.The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of two anonymous referees.     

Regulating a monopolist with limited funds

Summary. We consider the problem of regulating a monopolist with unknown costs when the regulator has limited funds. The optimal regulatory mechanism satisfies four properties. The first property is bunching at the top, that is the more efficient types produce the same quantity irrespective of their costs. The second property is separability of less efficient types. The third property is full bunching of types when the available fund is small enough. The fourth property of the mechanism is that it is a third best one, that is, the output under this regulatory mechanism is strictly lower than the second best output for any given type.Received: 14 June 2004, Revised: 31 August 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D82, H42, L51. Correspondence to: Manipushpak MitraThe authors would like to thank Georg Nöldeke for encouraging this work. The authors are also thankful to Debajyoti Chakrabarty, Sougata Poddar and one anonymous referee for helpful comments and important suggestions. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Graduiertenkolleg (DFG) 629 at the University of Bonn and from the Brussels Capital Region. The authors would like to thank the seminar participants at the EEA Conference 2003 (Stockholm), at the Indian Statistical Institute (New Delhi and Kolkata), at the Jadavpur University (Kolkata) and at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (Kolkata). The authors are solely responsible for the errors that may remain. An earlier version of this paper was called Financing infrastructure under budget constraints. Since the applicability of the problem developed in the earlier version is not limited to infrastucture, in this vers ion we have changed the name and content to incorporate this generality.     

Welfare and product testing by a regulated monopolist

This paper studies a monopoly firm with the ability to conduct costly pre-market testing of its product in order to predict how safe this product is to consume. While there are private incentives to test, the amount of testing effort supplied by a monopolist need not be optimal. In a model which allows for an imperfect system of liability, we characterize and compare the allocations of testing effort and output at the full social optimum, the pure monopoly solution, and the second-best regulated optimum wherein the regulator chooses testing effort and the monopolist chooses output and price.     

Two-part tariffs set by a risk-averse monopolist

This paper revisits the classical issues of two-part tariffs by considering risk aversion of a monopolistic seller. Under demand uncertainty, equilibrium unit price declines and approaches towards marginal cost as the seller becomes more risk averse. Marginal-cost pricing prevails, irrespective of the seller’s risk attitude, if clients are homogenous. Under cost uncertainty, unit price is higher than marginal cost and monotonically increases in risk aversion. The model is then extended to accommodate buyers’ risk aversion and it is found that demand uncertainty makes unit price decline in the seller’s risk aversion again but increase in buyers’ risk aversion.     

Income distribution and growth in a monopolist economy

Journal of Economics -     

Unionized labor market and licensing by a monopolist

We show that a monopolistic final goods producer may find it profitable to create competition by licensing its technology if the input market is imperfectly competitive. With a centralized union, we show that licensing by a monopolist is profitable under both uniform and discriminatory wage settings by the union. However, the incentive for licensing is higher under the former situation. We also show that licensing by the monopolist is profitable under both quantity and price competition, and the incentive for licensing is higher under price competition than under quantity competition. Our qualitative results hold even with decentralized unions.      

Bundling as an optimal selling mechanism for a multiple-good monopolist

Multiple objects may be sold by posting a schedule consisting of one price for each possible bundle and permitting the buyer to select the price-bundle pair of his choice. We identify conditions that must be satisfied by any price schedule that maximizes revenue within the class of all such schedules. We then provide conditions under which a price schedule maximizes expected revenue within the class of all incentive compatible and individually rational mechanisms in the n-object case. We use these results to characterize environments, mainly distributions of valuations, where bundling is the optimal mechanism in the two and three good cases.     

The long-run dynamics of product and process innovations for a multi-product monopolist

This paper introduces the dynamical framework which combines product and process innovations. The model contributes to the theoretical literature on innovations in two ways. First, it permits for the simultaneous dynamics of both types of innovations which is rarely considered in the literature. Second, the products being generated by the innovations are heterogeneous in their investment characteristics. This allows for the formation of the dynamic interdependency between both types of innovations. As a result, the steady-state levels of process innovations for each product are different and influence the dynamics of product innovations in turn.     

经理股票期权与竞争.

本将经理股票期权作为变量引入经理道德风险模型,分析了它对经理道德风险程度的影响,结果表明经理股票期权有利于降低经理的道德风险程度。然后,本考察了机制起作用的条件和推行经理股票期权现实障碍,得出结论：在现实竞争程度不高的环境下,引入股票期权,难以实现经营和所有的激励相容,很可能还增加一条国有资产流失的渠道。     

Public versus private insurance system with (and without) transaction costs: optimal segmentation policy of an informed monopolist

Computer-mediated transactions allow insurance companies to customize their contracts, while transaction costs limit this tendency toward customization. To capture this phenomenon, we develop a complete-information framework in which it is costly to design a new market segment when the segmentation policy (number and design of segments) is endogenously chosen. Both the case of a private and a public insurer are considered. Without transaction costs, these two insurance systems are equivalent in terms of social welfare and participation. With transaction costs, this equivalence is no longer present, and the analysis of this difference is the subject of this article.     

The quiet life of a monopolist: The efficiency losses of monopoly reconsidered

We study the efficiency losses of monopoly in a model where the firm’s total cost of production decreases with the manager’s effort to control cost. In contrast to the existing analyses of oligopolistic and monopolistically competitive markets that find an ambiguous relationship between competition intensity and managerial slack, we demonstrate that, under the same kind of cost condition, monopoly unambiguously reduces effort level and, in the case where ownership and control are separate, magnifies the effects of the moral hazard problem. Furthermore, under an alternative cost condition monopoly raises effort level rather than reducing it. In such a situation the separation of ownership and control may mitigate the productive inefficiency of monopoly.     

Government as a discriminating monopolist in the financial market: the case of China

We show that the many unusual features of China’s financial markets are consistent with a government choosing regulations to maximize a standard type of social welfare function. Under certain conditions, these regulations are equivalent to imposing explicit taxes on business and interest income, yet should be much easier to enforce. The observed implicit tax rates are broadly in line with those observed in other countries. The theory also forecasts, however, that China will face increasing incentives over time to shift to explicit taxes.     

Crowding-out effect and sorting in competitive labour markets with motivated workers

This article makes a contribution to the economics literature by inducing proper self-selection into contracts based on workers’ motivation. The novelty of our results is that it points out the alternative potential role of the crowding-out effect to separate workers based on their motivation.     

Environmental (De-) Regulation, Competition, and Policy Rules

This article analyzes some problems regarding our knowledge of environmental policy. Sustainable development as the prospective enlargement of the political agenda has been identified as a long-term challenge for economic policy which could get trapped in a new form of interventionism. The evolutionary market approach that is presented here focuses on development risks of environmental policy that are mostly neglected in standard theory. A transfer of the Hayekian concept of negative rules to the realm of environmental policy is critically discussed. A straight-forward transfer of Hayek's theory stressing the importance of negative rules cannot be recommended, since even the negative rules carry some development risks in the realm of environmental policy. Some preliminary political consequences are drawn which are appropriate to limit the extension of environmental targets in the future.     

Competition, cooperation, and the neighboring farmer effect

In this paper we propose a model that explains how cooperation can emerge spontaneously between firms in a highly competitive market environment. The basic idea is that the more competitive is the market, the less costly it is for firms to help each other like good neighbors. Cooperation takes the form of sharing technical know-how, which speeds up the adoption of new technologies (normally developed elsewhere) that spur industrial development. The model comports with the development history of Japan's first example of successful industrial development – its cotton spinning industry – whose conditions match those of firms in small open economies today.     

竞争与共生:对外贸易与广州的建设发展(1921-1936)

广州素以对外贸易兴市，由此进行生产要素的转换，实现经济循环。外贸与本埠市场开放、近代化生产、城市建设、市民生活等均有直接而重要的关系。洋行既控制了广州的外贸，对当地建设亦有推动。舶来品虽冲击了传统市场，但与国货生产并未脱离竞合的关系，并引领了市民的生活时尚。     

Intra-firm Branch Competition for a Monopolist

This paper studies the effect of intra-firm branch competition in a monopoly setting. It demonstrates that intra-firm branch competition has a significant impact on the firm's market decisions, and consequently on the market outcome. The paper has identified the sufficient conditions under which a branch-competitive monopoly is superior to a pure monopoly from the consumer's viewpoint in that the former supplies more quantity and higher quality at the same price.