L13 - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect MarketsNávrat zpět

The present paper investigates the use of national wage settings as a mechanism to deter entry via foreign direct investment (FDI) in a unionized monopoly industry. A union which sets centralized wages in a multi-unit firm can both decentralize and change the agenda to prevent the market entry of a non-unionized firm. The adoption of the efficient bargaining agenda is especially effective to deter entry because it lowers the fixed-cost threshold the entrant can bear. Moreover, through side-payments, the incumbent and the union can have common interests in modifying the wage setting to reach outcomes that is Pareto-superior to duopoly. However, if the union cedes "too much power" and becomes "too weak", internal conflicts with the incumbent firm may arise.

In this paper, we assess the effects of the investigations carried by the Turkish Competition Board in 1997, 2002 and 2003 on the degree competition in the Turkish cement market. For this aim, we used proverbial Bresnahan-Lau framework with alternative definitions for the supply relation. Our first finding is that cement producers had a considerable amount of market power at the period prior to the first investigation in 1997. In addition, this study shows that, parallel to our initial expectation, competition in the cement market increased thanks to the investigations. The positive effect of the first investigation is found to be especially significant. Hence, this study witnesses that the enforcement of the competition law by the Turkish Competition Board has produced the desired effects in the most problematic sector with respect to competition law.

This paper shows that the public firms can be more innovative and, thus, more efficient than the private firms. To verify this conclusion, a mixed duopoly is considered that allows both the public firm and the private firm to adopt a new technology with a positive fixed cost that reduces the marginal cost of production. The private firm maximizes profits while the public firm maximizes the weighed sum of the consumer and producer surpluses. In this framework, it is shown that if the cost of setting up a new technology takes an intermediate value when the weight of the consumer surplus in social welfare is high enough, the public firm is more innovative than the private one. Moreover, there is at least as much innovation in a mixed duopoly as in a private duopoly if the cost of setting up a new technology is high enough.