Monopoly,product differentiation and economic welfare

This paper discusses the pricing behavior of a monopolistic producer supplying several quality-differentiated goods by using a model of a Lancasterian characteristic approach with consumer's taste pattern dispersed. It examines how finer product differentiation, which is made by the producer by means of the introduction of a new good, changes the price structure and consumer's welfare. It will be establised that the entry of a new good imposes quite different impacts on the price of the goods of higher quality and on those of lower-quality goods.     

论正常垄断与非正常垄断

我国的垄断源自于计划经济,改革开放后有所改变,但行政垄断依然占主导地位。鉴于我国的国情,行政垄断组织的存在,有些是合理的,有些是不合理的。合理的行政垄断和经济垄断可称之为正常的垄断,不合理的行政垄断可称之为非正常的垄断。非正常的垄断会破坏资源的合理配置,损害社会经济福利。所以在我国反垄断应把矛头主要指向非正常的垄断。     

Monopoly and demand uncertainty

We develop a formal framework to analyse a monopoly’s problem when demand is determined by a Poisson-distribution and the valuations of the buyers are draws from a common distribution. The buyers have unit demand, and the good in question is discrete. The monopoly has to make its quantity and pricing decisions before demand is realised. We determine sufficient conditions for the monopoly’s pricing decision to be unique, and we demonstrate the difference to the planner’s problem by numerical examples. We also study an economy with a fixed number of buyers assuming that the valuations are draws from the uniform distribution. When the economy grows in the limit one recovers the standard case of a monopoly with linear demand and constant marginal costs.     

Monopoly Power and Stagflation

Post Keynesian economists have followed Joan Robinson's criticism of general equilibrium theory as abolishing history by allowing all contracts to be executed today for all future contingencies. This was the justification for the support of financial innovation to provide for the completeness of futures markets. The recent crisis has shown that force of history. Instead, many evolutionary and Keynesian economists have suggested the approach of cumulative causation as an approach that includes history and eschews equilibrium. This approach may provide a way to take history seriously in economic analysis.     

论市场经济中反垄断与垄断利用

生产集中导致垄断,垄断阻碍自由竞争,发展市场经济,必须反对垄断。为此,各国政府普遍制定了《反托拉斯法》,并以此维护本国企业的竞争秩序。但实际效果怎样呢?应如何看待我国的垄断现象?应如何有效地反对垄断和合理地利用垄断?本文对相关问题加以探讨。     

市场过程内生的垄断:市场权势和自然垄断

作为内生的垄断现象,市场权势实际上是争胜竞争过程的结果,并非垄断的市场结构所决定。如果将竞争理解为一个动态过程,市场权势具有竞争性和暂时性。自然垄断现象也是市场过程演化过程中的自然现象,无论源于规模经济还是范围经济,都表明自然垄断具有动态效率特征。除非政府人为阻碍争胜竞争过程的展开,通常市场过程内生力量能够有效制约非政府垄断现象。     

我国的垄断与反垄断

垄断形成的原因有两种，一为自然独占，二为人为垄断。自然独占的形成主要有三种，其一，大规模投资的经济效益，即有些资本密集型产业往往需要大量的投资才能开始生产，如电力工业，由于固定投资额的庞大，遂产生了大规模的效果，其结果就形成了自然独占。其二，掌握了天然资源，如果企业掌握了生产某项产品所需要的主要天然资源，该企业自然成为该项产品或天然资源的独占者。其三，经营效益的发挥。按照新达尔文主义的观点，企业在掌握了经营管理诀窍之后，往往可能随经济环境的改变而日益壮大，形成独家经营的局面。人为垄断的形成主要有三种，其一，法律保障，企业往往因拥有某项专利权、版权等知识产权而形成他人加入的障碍，成为法律所保证的独占，这种独占在科技日益发展的今天尤为突出。其二，政府授意，由于某些商品或服务内涵的特殊性，政府往往授意某个行政单位或事业单位独立供应。这种物品或服务有两类，一是政府欲禁止而因某些人的特殊需要无法全面禁止的（如麻醉品），二是涉及国民健康的物品或服务。其三，企业恶性竞争，某个企业挟其雄厚财力，以低地生产成本的价格打击竞争对手，迫使竞争者相继退出市场。     

Monopoly rationing revisited

This paper establishes that, whenever a simple pricing strategy fails to attain to the rationing outcome, a more complex pure price strategy may yet do so. It is also shown that rising marginal cost with uncertain demand may make rationing beneficial.     

对垄断的再认识

全球竞争首先表现为世界垄断性公司的国际竞争 ,其结果是垄断从一国走向国际 ,因此 ,二十一世纪国际经济的真正特点不是自由竞争 ,而是全球垄断。在竞争和行政手段无法真正打破垄断的情况下 ,真正从普通公众利益出发的只能是依靠法律手段打破垄断。     

Monopoly capital and capitalist inefficiency

This paper examines the arguments and assertions of Baran’s and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (1966) by assessing the degree of economic efficiency or inefficiency in how surplus value and economic surplus were created by 16 major capitalist economies during the 2000s using data envelopment analysis (DEA). After assigning a score to the degree of economic efficiency/inefficiency for each country, one can then assess which factors influence the degree of efficiency/inefficiency. This paper finds empirical support for many of the arguments put forth by the authors, Baran and Sweezy, as well as others regarding the inefficiency of the use of some forms of economic activity to help absorb economic surplus and to create surplus value.     

行政性垄断导致行业生产成本低效

本文首先从产权和地区两个维度研究了行政性垄断对行业生产成本的影响,发现高行政性进入壁垒条件下的国有产权低效与地方政府扭曲要素价格造成的要素省际流动障碍,是造成行业生产成本无效率的主要原因。其次,依据行政性垄断对各行业生产效率的影响程度,建立了各行业行政性垄断程度的判定体系,考察了工业部门各行业的行政性垄断程度。最后,选取若干代表性行业对行政性垄断引致的成本无效进行了实证测算。     

Lobbying and welfare

The paper shows that the cost of any distortion, arising without the aid of resource-using lobbying addressed to having the distortion implemented, is not necessarily less than the cost of the same distortion arising with the aid of such lobbying. This refutation of the prevalent assertions to the contrary reflects the second-best nature of the problem at hand.     

Direct Investment, Monopoly and Welfare

This paper considers foreign direct investment which produces a manufactured good entirely for the market of the host country. It analyzes the welfare implications of an expansion of this activity, and compares the results with ones obtained from the model of export processing zones. It is shown that, contrary to the case of EPZs, an expansion of market-oriented direct investment improves welfare under free trade, and if there is an import tariff, the expansion may improve welfare under certain conditions.     

Monopoly,economic efficiency and unemployment

The objective of this paper is to analyze the efficiency consequences of monopoly from the perspective of an efficiency-wage model of unemployment based on Shapiro and Stiglitz (1984). An important feature of our model is that a firm can raise the probability that a shirking worker is detected by increasing its effort or investment in the monitoring of workers. Using this model we study how a monopolist's decision with regard to employment, output and monitoring is affected by exogenous variables such as job separation rate, technological advances, market size, and unemployment benefits. Furthermore, by comparing with the competitive equilibrium we find that monopoly is associated with higher unemployment rate, smaller output, and less monitoring. Surprisingly, however, monopoly does not necessarily lead to lower welfare level.     

A Monopoly Classroom Experiment

The author uses a simple classroom experiment to develop the economic model of monopoly. As a pedagogical tool, the experiment introduces students to the nature of the monopoly problem and motivates them to think of the associated efficiency issues as a divergence between private benefits and social contributions. As a test of economic principles, the experiment highlights the role of information and fairness ideals in determining economic outcomes.     

Nonlinear prices and welfare

The paper constructs a general equilibrium model of education which is distinguished by a ‘job ladder’ or sticky wages, combined with the assumption that educated labor is preferred over uneducated labor, i.e. per a ‘fairness-in-hiring’ rule, when there is excess demand for jobs at given wages. This theory of education, considered to be relevant to liberal arts education in underdeveloped countries, is contrasted with the human capital doctrine and the Arrow-Spence screening theories. The analysis is mainly focused on examining the social inefficiency properties of the educational process captured in the model constructed.     

Immigration and welfare magnets

"This paper investigates if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits. Income-maximizing behavior implies that foreign-born welfare recipients unlike their native-born counterparts, may be clustered in the states that offer the highest benefits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant welfare recipients are indeed more heavily clustered in high-benefit states than the immigrants who do not receive welfare, or than natives. As a result, the welfare participation rate of immigrants is much more sensitive to changes in welfare benefits than that of natives."     

Simultaneous entry and welfare

I examine the welfare properties of free entry under conditions of simultaneous entry. Specifically, I consider the second-best problem of influencing the number of entrants while taking as given firm behavior upon entry. I consider two alternative models of simultaneous entry: grab-the-dollar entry and war-of-attrition entry. I show that, if entry costs are low, then the results from previous models of sequential entry are fairly robust to the possibility of simultaneous entry. If however entry costs are high, then the welfare effects of free entry depend delicately on the nature of the entry game being played.     

Internal debt and welfare

This paper analyzes how multinational firms' internal debt financing affects high-tax countries. It uses a dynamic small open economy model and takes into account that internal debt impacts both the multinational firms' investment decisions and the government's tax policy. The government has incentives to redistribute income from firm owners to workers. If the government's redistributive motive is not too strong, internal debt reduces welfare in the short term by decreasing tax revenues. However, debt financing stimulates capital accumulation and exerts a positive long-term welfare impact.