核心技术的局部垄断与产业结构选择——计算机硬件行业的经济学分析

Partially Monopoly and Industrial Structure Selection of the Core Technology Owners——An Economic Analysis of the Computer Hardware Industry

借用一个局部垄断的概念,本文分析了核心技术拥有者的最优决策。相对于垄断整个产业链,局部垄断可以帮助核心技术拥有者在不降价的情况下扩大市场需求,以下游厂商的惨烈竞争为代价换来更高利润。此时,上游核心技术垄断者有动机引入越来越多的企业进入下游产业,营造一个完全竞争的成品市场,虽然这一措施降低了最终产品的售价,有利于消费者剩余的提高,但固定成本的存在会导致产业链下游的企业重复投资,产生巨大的社会损失。

As the leader of computer hardware industry, why does Intel choose only to be monopoly of the CPU market instead of monopoly of the whole PC industry？ Analogously, why does Philips only sell encoders instead of VCD/DVD players by itself？ Using a partially monopoly framework, we analysis the optimum response of the core technology owners. We illustrate that being a partially monopoly supplier in an industrial chain can help the tech-owners expand their market share without decreasing their product prices, with the downstream fierce competition as the sacrifice. Upstream tech-owners usually have an incentive to hire an increasingly larger and larger population of downstream manufacturers, which in result create a competitive consuming market. Comparing with the traditional monopoly of the whole chain, partially monopoly deduces the ultimate price of consuming products and improves the social welfare when not taking fixed cost into account. However, once we take fixed cost into consideration, this kind of market structure means a huge sunk cost to society.