Undesirable Competition

It is generally believed that higher competition benefits consumers, and encourage the antitrust authorities to foster competition. We show that this view can be misleading in the presence of welfare-maximising nationalised firms. Using a simple model with a nationalised firm, we show that entry of private profitmaximising firms makes consumers worse off compared to nationalised monopoly. Entry increases profit of the incumbent firm, industry profit and social welfare at the expense of the consumers. Our result is important for competition policy.Competition; Consumer surplus; Nationalised firm

Partial Privatization, Foreign Competition, and Tariffs Ranking

This paper compares the optimal tariff and revenue maximizing tariffs in the presence of partial privatization. We show that in an international mixed oligopoly with asymmetric costs and partial privatization, when the marginal cost of the privatized firm exceeds a critical value, maximum -revenue tariff is higher than optimum-welfare tariff. Otherwise, optimum-welfare tariff is higher than maximum-revenue tariff. In addition, associating with the market-opening policy, the domestic government should accelerate privatization path and impose a lower welfare-optimum tariff rate.mixed oligopoly, partial privatization, tariff ranking

Privatization, Efficiency Gap, and Subsidization with Excess Taxation Burden

It is well recognized that the impact of subsidization/taxation policies hinges on the market structure to which they apply. We show that different degree of efficiency gain sharply changes the comparisons of optimal subsidy, total outputs and social welfare between mixed and private duopoly. What is more, for an imposition of an optimal subsidy, welfare may increase, decrease, or remain unchanged with privatization, which depends on the level of the cost efficiency gap and the taxation burden. However, it may be possible to raise welfare through privatization as long as the efficiency gain prevails or no excess taxation burden exists. Government sets higher subsidy to stimulate firms' production if the value of cost-differential is assured.Privatization, Mixed Duopoly, Cost Efficiency Gap, Subsidization, Excess Taxation Burden

Governance and foreign direct investment: is there a two-way relationship?

The issue of economic governance is highly discussed pertaining to the question of industrialisation of a country, yet the literature on international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) hardly pays attention to this aspect. We show that higher investment in economic governance attracts FDI. However, whether the possibility of FDI induces more investment in governance is not immediate, and depends on the factors such as the marginal cost difference between the firms, the international transportation cost and the cost of FDI. Our results suggest that we may expect a two-way relationship between investment in economic governance and inward FDI in more technologically backward domestic countries. However, a less technologically backward domestic country may have a strategic reason for relatively poor economic governance in order to prevent FDI, if we control for other benefits from FDI, such as knowledge spillover and domestic employment generation.Foreign direct investment; Governance; Welfare

Trade liberalization and environmental tax in differentiated oligopoly with consumption externalities

This paper investigates the environment tax and trade liberalization with different market structures (pure oligopoly or mixed oligopoly) juxtaposing the substitutability of the goods (homogenous goods and differentiated goods), wherein environmental damage is associated with consumption. It shows that the environmental tax in mixed oligopoly is higher than in pure oligopoly irrespective of the properties of goods. In addition, it demonstrates that when the domestic market increases its openings, the tariff reduction does not always bring positive effects on the environment in mixed oligopoly but, in pure oligopoly with homogeneous goods, the tariff reduction is bad for the environment.

Cournot vs. Bertrand in mixed markets with R&D

We investigate the question of endogenous choice of price and quantity competition in a mixed duopoly where both welfare maximising public firm and profit maximising private firm invest in cost-reducing R&D. In contrary to the conventional belief that Cournot competition arises in equilibrium, we find that price competition constitutes equilibrium. We further argue that the results that Cournot profit is strictly higher than Bertrand in standard oligopoly and that the Bertrand profit is strictly higher than Cournot in mixed oligopoly, both hold when the public and private firm engage in R&D. We also find that the public firm is more innovative than the private firm

Cross Ownership, Loan Commitment, Managerial Delegation and the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”

This paper investigates the relationship between cross ownership, sales delegation and loan commitment. We find that under sales delegation, a higher degree of cross ownership decreases the optimal bank loan interest rate, which is beneficial to the firm profits. However, cross ownership reduces the firm output, leading a lower consumer surplus and social welfare. The policy implication is that antitrust authority and banking regulatory bureau should “coordinate” policies to mitigate the concerned stakeholders’ conflicts

Bertrand-Cournot profit reversal in a vertical structure with cross ownership

We provide a new reason for Bertrand-Cournot profit reversal. In a two-tier industry with a profit-maximising input supplier and symmetric final good producers, we show that the profit reversal occurs under passive cross ownership among firms

Environmental taxes in a differentiated mixed duopoly

Beladi and Chao (2006) and Bárcena-Ruiz and Garzón (2006) considered the role of environmental policy on the decision whether to privatize a public firm in different market structures. This paper re-examines whether privatization improves (or deteriorates) the environment in a mixed duopolistic framework with differentiated product and pollution abatement. It is shown that, due to privatization, less attention is paid to pollution abatement by all the firms coupled with less environment taxes levied by the government in a differentiated duopoly, and the environment is more (less) damaged when the product is less (more) substitutable. When the product is highly substitutable, industry profits increase because this softens the intensity of the product market, but social welfare deteriorates accompanied with the path of privatization because the loss of consumer surplus and tax revenue exceeds the increases in profits, even if the environment is less damaged.Environmental taxes Mixed oligopoly privatization