Defying Monopolies

CHINESE consumers are caught up in a power play - quite lit- erally. When it comes to selecting an electricity supplier, choic- es are limited to the State Grid Corp. in the north and China Southern Power Grid in the south. Monopoly of the industry has long been the status quo in China, but now there are signs that the situation is changing.

Monopolies Feel the Heat

AFTER infant formula manufacturers announced a price cut in August, 29-year-old Wang Dong decided to postpone buying a new car, The announcement to slash prices in China by up to 20 percent was made by six milk powder companies soon after the country＇s economic planner, the Na- tional Development and Reform Commission （NDRC） unveiled an antitrust probe. The probe＇s price-slash- ing effect boosted Wang＇s confidence that a recently launched investigation into the country＇s auto sector would have similar results.

Busting the Monopolies

China’s Anti-Monopoly Law has been in effect for more than one year, but court, legislative and law enforcement efforts are still needed to clear up unfair

Do Not Pass Go:Targeting Monopolies

Prior reforms would be implemented in three monopolized sectors—the railway,power and salt industries At a national conference on eco- nomic reform held in Wuhan,Hubei Province,on May 6,six priority areas were stressed for economic reform,namely,state-owned enterprises, essential production factors,rural areas, society,foreign-related sectors and the mod-

Unraveling Predatory Pricing:Insights From Case Studies and Game Theory Modeling

This paper develops a game-theory model for predatory pricing via in-depth analyses of three case studies:Brooke Group Ltd.v.Brown&Williamson Tobacco Corp.,Matsushita Electric Industries Co.v.Zenith Radio Corporation,and AKZO Chemie BV v.Commission of the European Communities.This model is based on subsequent action game theory models and rational economics behavior,offering a chronological outline of the“predation”stages.It presents the predator’s decisions,the prey’s potential responses,possible loops,and the two distinctive outcomes.The analysis of the model in context of the three case studies demonstrates its practicality in assessing real-life predatory pricing scenarios and players’strategies.It’s flexibility also allows applications in related fields.Overall,this paper offers a comprehensive framework that bridges the gap between law,economics,and game theory in the study of predatory pricing,informing future research in this area.

Jump-Dealing and Resale Price Maintenance:An Offsetting Theory and Its Policy Implications

Resale price maintenance(RPM) exerts both positive and negative influences on the market competition.Such duality and the consequent difficulties in presenting evidence have often become highly controversial issues in anti-monopoly law enforcement.We found that in reality,effects of jump-dealing and RPM can offset each other.This paper systematically proposed the offsetting theory of jump-dealing and RPM,and analyzed their policy implications for anti price monopoly,thus providing some simple principles and methods to the law enforcement against vertical price monopoly.This will not only reduce the possible "superfluous actions " in current law enforcement,but also help avoid compounded mistakes due to difficulties of enforcement.

The Monopoly and Governance of the Platform Economy in the Digital Era

The platform economy has become a new engine and leading force for China's economic development.With the rapid development of super internet platforms, this field has drawn growing attention from attention of anti-monopoly authorities.The technical attributes and business characteristics of the platform economy endow those platforms with a "natural" monopoly advantage, and the quasi-public attributes of the internet platforms require anti-monopoly authorities to bear more monopoly governance responsibilities.This paper analyzes the difficulties in monopoly governance of the platform economy from the perspectives of anti-monopoly legislation, government regulation and global monopoly governance, and proposes several solutions and suggestions to improve the effectiveness of anti-monopoly governance and promote healthy development of the digital economic ecology.The solutions and suggestions include: focusing on building up technology-based regulatory capabilities, accelerating the legislation on data protection of data, and developing an anti-monopoly system based on the principle of giving priority to innovation.

Analysis of OPEC’s Monopoly in Crude Oil Market

This article briefly and historically reviews the polices of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries （OPEC） and analyzes the factors that facilitate or hinder OPEC＇s monopoly in the crude oil market. The industrial concentration ratio is chosen to measure OPEC＇s monopoly power based on the data from 1986 to 2004. It is concluded that OPEC possesses a long-standing cartel foundation and a rather strong monopoly in the world crude oil market. At the same time, there are unstable factors that influence and even weaken OPEC＇s monopoly.

Brakes put on monopoly of oil sector

When you look for gas stations to refill yourcar’s tank in China,you will probably find only twobrands:China National Petroleum Corp(CNPC)and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp(SinopecGroup).But there will soon be a new player in themarket:"Shide."

China's Next Step:to Reform Monopoly Industries

Based on the study of enterprise managerial corruption in Chinese SOEs, this paper points out the new characteristics of managerial corruption in Chinese SOEs:administrative monopoly has become increasingly common, while corruption for personal gains by SOE leaders hits become less and less frequent.This means the reform of SOEs has entered a new stage in which the core problem is how to deal with administrative monopoly.

Monopoly Causes Inter-industry Wage Differentials

Inter-industry wage differentials in China, measured in terms of average employment earnings by industry, are significant and have been increasing since 1988. The coefficient of variables measuring inter-industry average earning differentials is apparently on the rise along with the subdivision of industry. A theoretical analysis of the labour market indicates that inter-industry wage differentials are mainly due to human capital variation among the employees of different industries and the likelihood of monopoly rent sharing. An empirical study finds that employee characteristics such as sex, age and education can only explain 60 percent of CVs in the period 2003 to 2005 and the rest may be due to the effect of monopoly rent sharing in certain industries. A residual analysis of wage equation proves that the monopoly industries of technology or knowledge share a small proportion of rents with employment, whereas non-competitive monopoly industries generally garner an abnormal share of rents, as much as half of their above-average earnings for their industries. Such abnormal rents and benefits are mainly the result of low cost natural resources, the use of state-owned assets, the misappropriation of consumer welfare and the seeking of fiscal or social subsidy for cost inflation. So, China should deal with the non-competitive monopoly industries by reforming their monopoly power and primary social distribution mechanism to structure a fair income distribution order.

Econophysical Applications for Economic Progress:Monopoly and Competition Cases

This study attempts to investigate the relationship between monopoly and competition and the philosophy of progress,using the methods,models,and terms from physics.The term“progress”is a newly adopted term and is defined as the value of an increase in the production rate per unit of time.It is shown that to achieve progress,it is necessary to increase the production on a non-linear basis over time.Therefore,it is enough to have many firms that interact with each other under the influence of“market forces”.It is important to have a high level of university education,a legal environment for competition and indestructible antitrust laws.Even without strong science,you can make progress by acquiring technology and creating conditions for competition in the market.A factor that strongly influences progress,of course,is technology.For the development of technology,there is a great need for science.Science is a very powerful factor that affects the non-linear change in the economic development.It is shown that during the transition period from an absolute monopoly to an imperfect monopoly the system becomes more complex,and its output characteristics become non-linear as a function of time.It was found that the relationship between monopoly and competition is very simple,and there is no contradiction between them.Initially,the market is born as a monopoly,and then with the creation of similar firms,competition,as the natural market process,begins between them.

Natural Monopoly and Mixed Ownership Reform--Based on Natural Experiment and Cost Function Analysis Method

Despite a multitude of theoretical discussions on China's mixed ownership reform, very few studies have addressed realistic questions concerning the implementation of the reform. The Resolutions of the Third Plenum of the 18 th CPC Central Committee and other reform strategies have outlined the reform of sectors with natural monopoly, including urban public utility sectors. The question is how mixed ownership reform should be carried out in sectors of natural monopoly, or which public utilities sectors should enjoy priority of mixed ownership reform. To answer this question, this paper employs data of large public utility enterprises in China from 1998 to 2008, and estimates the natural monopoly attribute at the industry level and corporate total factor productivity(TFP) using cost function analysis method excluding the impact of product price factor. Based on the difference-indifferences-in-differences(DDD) method of natural experiment, an empirical test is carried out for the relationship among natural monopoly, mixed ownership reform and corporate productivity. Our results suggest that:(1) Statistically, mixed ownership reform cannot significantly increase corporate TFP in sectors with natural monopoly;(2) mixed ownership reform should not be carried out indiscriminately on a nationwide basis and for all public utilities sectors. Such an attempt of reform without distinguishing natural monopoly and the level of competitiveness is fraught with policy uncertainties;(3) relative to sectors with natural monopoly, corporate productivity in competitive sectors after mixed ownership reform will improve more significantly and enjoy greater "policy dividends" of institutional reform. Therefore, mixed ownership reform should be carried out first in competitive sectors.

A Study on High Incomes in China's Monopoly Industries

High incomes in state monopoly industries have drawn extensive public concerns in China. The management of state-owned enterprises(SOEs) is motivated and empowered to set payment schemes in their own favor, resulting in the greater extent to which their senior executives are overpaid as compared with average workers. Hence, the level of unjustified high incomes is heterogeneous among employees of different income levels in state monopoly industries. Using Machado-Mata counterfactual decomposition method based on the regression of multiple quantiles, this paper measures the proportions of reasonable and unreasonable parts of pay gap between state monopoly industries and competitive industries. Our study found that the workforce of state monopoly industries are overpaid across various wage levels, while the extent to which they are overpaid increases with the rise of wage level. The implication is that compared with average workers, executives in state monopoly industries are overpaid to an even greater extent. This requires that the government focus on curbing the high executive income in addition to putting a lid on the gross payroll of SOEs in state monopoly industries. The fundamental strategy to resolving the excessive high income in state monopoly industries is to bring different types of SOEs under different corporate management models and income systems.

Price Discrimination in the Steel Industry:Evidence from Egypt

This paper studies and enlightens mainly price discrimination;which is simply selling products for differentiated prices.First,a literature framework is detailed with all the theories and types of price discrimination throughout the years.It is a strategy that is used worldwide by so many companies and firms,but this paper studies specifically the activity of the major player in the Egyptian steel industry;Ezz steel.The research resulted in;that there is no price discrimination,activities are implied in the industry currently by the companies due to the interference of the government.However,before that,the company applied some strategies that are illustrated in the paper in detail.

Pure Competition and Monopoly

Pure competition has been traditionally used by economistsas the criterion to measure other market structures^2.Severalfeatures are highlighted that separate pure competition fromother market structures.For instance,a large number of inde-pendently acting sellers^3 can be found in a highly organizedmarket offering their products,which are standardized and ho-

Monopoly No More

RIGHT at the start of 2013, the National Development and Reform Commission （NDRC） fined six overseas companies for rigging prices for LCD panels, call ing attention to foreign companies who try to undermine China＇s Anti-Monopoly Laws.

Dismantling Auto Monopoly

DENG Ouya, a Chinese Canadian who works as an IT engineer in Montreal, has nurtured an en- thusiasm for cars since he was a student. ＂1 bought my Mercedes-Benz GLK 350 at the price of 50,000 Canadian dollars （$45.800） when migrating to Canada, but the price for the same model assem- bled in China is 450,000 yuan （$73,100） or so in the Chinese market,＂ Deng told ChinAfrica, Moreover, the prices of auto parts can be as astoundingly expensive as those of finished cars in the Chinese market. This inequality largely owes to the monopolistic position of foreign carmakers.

Breaking the Monopoly in China's Petroleum and Gas Trade

OnSeptember12,1999,asix-expertgroupoftheWorldBankcametoBedingattheinvitationoftheResearchinstituteoftheStateCouncilEconomicRestrUcturingOffice.Inthefollowingtwoweeks,aseriesofmeetingsandtalkswasheld.TheseincludedofficialsandleadersfromtheStateCouncil...