Competition
Man and the economy,
06/2020, Volume:
7, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
A competitive system requires considerable regulation of business by the state, which may compromise the system itself. In economics, competition has two distinct meanings. In the usual sense, ...competition refers to the situation of perfect competition, when many producers supply identical products. In the second sense, competition refers to the process whereby producers develop and market new products and lower costs by improving their methods of production.
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CEKLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, UL, UM
•Water scarcity and the need to price water create potential for private sector involvement.•The interaction between the public and private sector in the water sector is complex.•Contract theory to ...some extent substitute the need for 100% public ownership.•Water Public Private Partnerships allow for a whole range of private sector involvement.
Water scarcity is increasing across the globe. We discuss how the private sector and private investment can assist in the fight against water scarcity, especially in advanced and middle-income economies. We first lay out from an economic perspective why local, regional, and national governments have traditionally played an outsized role in providing water security. We next describe a whole set of possible roles for the private sector, ranging from a fully privatized water sector to more limited public–private partnerships (PPPs), corporate social responsibility (CSR), and impact investment that may take place independent of the public sector. The theoretical and empirical underpinnings of an argument for greater private involvement emerge from reassessing the traditional view of the water sector as a natural monopoly with increasing returns to scale, as well as from contract theory that emphasizes how carefully written contracts imply control but do not require public ownership at all times. Rising water scarcity and water infrastructures badly in need of an upgrade in many places point to public institutions and societies not meeting the social and environmental challenge, which opens the door for private initiatives in the form of corporate social responsibility and impact investing.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
In a transition to 100% renewable energy, public regulation has to deal with, among other issues, price efficiency, security of supply, and the transition from sector based fossil fuel systems to ...sector integrated smart energy systems based on energy conservation and renewable energy. Most studies and practical policies only focus on building “green incentives” into the money flows. There is less research focus on the importance of citizen and consumer ownership models in the green energy transition process. This is problematic, as different ownership models have different influences on price efficiency as well as the ability of the smart energy system to integrate large amounts of fluctuating energy. The purpose of this paper is to analyze citizen and consumer ownership models both with regard to their influence on consumer prices and their capability to handle the multitude of coordination tasks in a transition from sector based to integrated smart energy systems. A consumer ownership model has positive potentials both in terms of maintaining low energy prices and securing low coordination transaction costs in smart energy systems. The realization of these positive potentials is dependent on the concrete institutional context and public regulation in which a given ownership construction is embedded.
•Consumer ownership of natural monopolies plus non profit governance gives low prices.•Low prices pays for the extra costs of early introduction of green energy technologies.•Consumer ownership gives low renewable energy integration transaction costs.•100% renewable energy mainly consists of consumer near energy systems.•Smart energy system technologies are at the outset mainly consumer owned.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
This paper argues that airport economics is based on the concept of economics as the positive value free science of efficient allocation of scarce resources with given wants, ignoring the approach of ...economics as a moral science. It assesses critically the results on major policy issues. Although there is strong empirical evidence of natural monopoly of airports, no consensus has emerged. The effects of privatisation have been assessed in terms of cost efficiency, but not in terms of economic welfare and distribution. While airport economics has made theoretical progress, the policy recommendations on single versus dual till are less relevant than those from the older models. Airport expansion is assessed in many cases by economic impact studies instead of cost benefit analysis. Economists applying impact analysis, have contributed to an irrational policy discussion. The role for morals in the management of airports has been neglected, although there is evidence that incentives might backfire. The paper argues that airport economics based on economics as a moral science could improve airport economics, and make its policy recommendations more relevant.
•No consensus on natural monopoly.•Privatisation not assessed in terms of economic welfare.•Policy irrelevant new models on single versus dual till.•No research on fair and rational airport expansion.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
The family of optimization models of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been shown to be very useful performance analytics tools that support benchmarking systems in measuring, comparing, and ...enhancing various notations of efficiency. It has also been extensively used as an advanced analytical instrument in the field of incentive regulation. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive literature review of DEA publications in this domain. The study should raise the awareness of the topic amongst scientists as well as practitioners and encourage further research.
•Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been extensively used in incentive regulation.•We provide a comprehensive literature review of DEA publications in this domain.•We aim at raising the awareness of the topic amongst scientists and practitioners.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
We study the conditions under which production processes exhibit a decreasing average cost function in the absence of perfectly competitive input markets and discuss some implications for regulatory ...policy.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
•Data give digital monopolies market power from improved matching & reduced privacy.•While data improve matches, they allow extraction of consumer surplus.•Thus, consumer surplus is maximized for ...intermediate privacy.•With regulated prices, consumer surplus is maximized without privacy protection.•Price regulation may allow data’s social benefits without consumer harm.
Increasing returns to scale in data gathering and processing give rise to a new form of monopoly, referred to here as digital monopoly. Digital monopolies create new challenges for regulators and antitrust authorities. We address two in this paper: market power arising from improved match values and from reduced privacy. The digital monopoly’s profit and social surplus always increase as privacy decreases. However, consumer surplus is non-monotone in privacy. Without privacy, the match value is perfect but completely extracted by the digital monopoly. In contrast, as privacy goes to infinity, match values and social surplus go to zero. With regulated prices, consumer surplus is maximized without privacy protection. As with natural monopolies, price regulation thus remains an appropriate tool in the digital age to capture the social benefits from increasing returns to scale without harming consumers.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
•The Natural Monopoly effect in brand purchasing: do big brands really appeal to lighter category buyers?•The Natural Monopoly effect is that big brands tend to unduly appeal to (‘monopolise’) less ...frequent or less knowledgeable users of the product category.•However, there is a lack of explicit knowledge about how prevalent or strong this effect is.•This study analyses brands in 28 consumer goods categories and finds strong evidence of the Natural Monopoly effect. Large brands have buyers that, on average, purchase the category less frequently.
This paper investigates the Natural Monopoly NM effect, which is that large brands have buyers who are on average less frequent or ‘lighter’ purchasers of the product category. The study analyzes the NM effect for brands in 28 consumer goods categories in The Netherlands. The analysis employs a multiple regression with category purchase rate as the dependent variable; and brand penetration, together with brand price, brand type, average pack size and promotion incidence as independent variables. The study finds that higher brand penetration is indeed associated with a lower rate of category purchase, controlling for the other variables in the model. The NM effect is reasonably large: the largest two brands in a category tend to have a buyer base that on average purchase the category about 25% less frequently than those of the smallest two. The study also derives an explanation for how large brands are generally purchased more frequently, even when their buyer base on average buys the category less frequently. The findings imply that a focus on heavy category buyers is inconsistent with the goal of growing a brand.
这篇论文研究了自然垄断 (NM) 效应, 即大品牌的购买者通常是那些购买该产品类别的频率较低或 “较轻” 的购买者. 该研究分析了 NM 效应对荷兰28个消费品类别的品牌的影响. 分析采用了以品类购买率为因变量的多元回归分析; 品牌渗透率与品牌价格, 品牌类型, 平均包装尺寸, 促销发生率则为自变量. 研究发现, 在控制了控制了模型中的其他变量后, 较高的品牌渗透率确实与较低的品类购买率有关. NM 效应是相当大的: 一个类别中最大的两个品牌往往有一个平均购买该类别产品的买家基础, 他们购买该类别产品的频率比最小的两个品牌低25%左右. 该研究还解释了为什么大品牌通常被购买得更频繁, 即使他们的买家平均购买该品类的频率较低. 调查结果表明, 专注于大类别的买家与品牌成长的目标是不一致的.
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