IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/matsoc/v62y2011i2p95-100.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Inducing efficiency in oligopolistic markets with increasing returns to scale

Author

Listed:
  • Sengupta, Abhijit
  • Tauman, Yair

Abstract

We consider a Cournot oligopoly market of firms possessing increasing returns to scale technologies (which may not be identical). It is shown that an external regulating agency can increase total social welfare without running a deficit by offering to subsidize one firm an amount which depends on the output level of that firm and the market price. The firms bid for this contract, the regulator collects the highest bid upfront and subsidizes the highest bidding firm. It is shown that there exists a subsidy schedule such that (i) the regulator breaks even, (ii) the subsidized firm obtains zero net profit and charges a price equal to its average cost, (iii) every other firm willingly exit the market and (iv) market price decreases, consumers are better off and total welfare improves.

Suggested Citation

  • Sengupta, Abhijit & Tauman, Yair, 2011. "Inducing efficiency in oligopolistic markets with increasing returns to scale," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 95-100, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:matsoc:v:62:y:2011:i:2:p:95-100
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165489611000400
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sappington, David E M & Sibley, David S, 1988. "Regulating without Cost Information: The Incremental Surplus Subsidy Scheme," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 29(2), pages 297-306, May.
    2. Baron, David P & Myerson, Roger B, 1982. "Regulating a Monopolist with Unknown Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(4), pages 911-930, July.
    3. Ken Binmore & Paul Klemperer, 2002. "The Biggest Auction Ever: the Sale of the British 3G Telecom Licences," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 74-96, March.
    4. Veronika Grimm & Frank Riedel & Elmar G. Wolfstetter, 2000. "Implementing Efficient Market Structure," CESifo Working Paper Series 269, CESifo.
    5. Klemperer, Paul, 2002. "How (not) to run auctions: The European 3G telecom auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 829-845, May.
    6. Emmanuelle Auriol & Jean‐Jacques Laffont, 1992. "Regulation By Duopoly," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(3), pages 507-533, September.
    7. Milgrom,Paul, 2004. "Putting Auction Theory to Work," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521536721.
    8. Jean-Jacques Laffont & Jean Tirole, 1993. "A Theory of Incentives in Procurement and Regulation," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262121743, December.
    9. Ingo Vogelsang & Jorg Finsinger, 1979. "A Regulatory Adjustment Process for Optimal Pricing by Multiproduct Monopoly Firms," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 157-171, Spring.
    10. Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2004. "The Design of an Efficient Private Industry," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(2-3), pages 516-525, 04/05.
    11. Vogelsang, Ingo, 2002. "Incentive Regulation and Competition in Public Utility Markets: A 20-Year Perspective," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 5-27, July.
    12. Guesnerie, Roger & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1978. "Taxing price makers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 423-455, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chun‐Hsiung Liao & Yair Tauman, 2004. "Implementation of the Socially Optimal Outcome," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 72(5), pages 618-625, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ingo Vogelsang, 2006. "Electricity Transmission Pricing and Performance-based Regulation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 97-126.
    2. Armstrong, Mark & Sappington, David E.M., 2007. "Recent Developments in the Theory of Regulation," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 27, pages 1557-1700, Elsevier.
    3. Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1994. "The New Economics of Regulation Ten Years After," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 507-537, May.
    4. Ajodhia, Virendra & Hakvoort, Rudi, 2005. "Economic regulation of quality in electricity distribution networks," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 211-221, September.
    5. Schober, Dominik & Weber, Christoph, 2015. "Refinancing under yardstick regulation with investment cycles: The case of long-lived electricity network assets," ZEW Discussion Papers 15-065, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    6. Mark Armstrong & David E.M. Sappington, 2006. "Regulation, Competition and Liberalization," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(2), pages 325-366, June.
    7. Dominik Schober, 2013. "Refinancing under Yardstick Regulation with Investment Cycles–The Case of Long-Lived Electricity Network Assets," EWL Working Papers 1321, University of Duisburg-Essen, Chair for Management Science and Energy Economics, revised Jun 2013.
    8. Dementiev, Andrei & Han, Hyen Jin, 2020. "A theory of deregulation in public transport," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    9. Hesamzadeh, M.R. & Rosellón, J. & Gabriel, S.A. & Vogelsang, I., 2018. "A simple regulatory incentive mechanism applied to electricity transmission pricing and investment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 423-439.
    10. Benford, Frank A., 1998. "On the Dynamics of the Regulation of Pollution: Incentive Compatible Regulation of a Persistent Pollutant," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-25, July.
    11. Emmanuelle Auriol & Pierre M. Picard, 2009. "Government Outsourcing: Public Contracting with Private Monopoly," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(540), pages 1464-1493, October.
    12. Makoto TANAKA, 2005. "Optimal Transmission Capacity under Nodal Pricing and Incentive Regulation for Transco," Discussion papers 05021, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    13. Estrella Alonso & Joaquín Sánchez-Soriano & Juan Tejada, 2020. "Mixed Mechanisms for Auctioning Ranked Items," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 8(12), pages 1-26, December.
    14. Emiel Maasland & Sander Onderstal, 2006. "Going, Going, Gone! A Swift Tour of Auction Theory and its Applications," De Economist, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 197-249, June.
    15. Philippe Jehiel & Benny Moldovanu, 2005. "Allocative and Informational Externalities in Auctions and Related Mechanisms," Levine's Bibliography 784828000000000490, UCLA Department of Economics.
    16. Marja Appelman & S. Onderstal & Joeri Gorter & Mark Lijesen & Richard Venniker, 2003. "Equal rules or equal opportunities? Demystifying level playing field," CPB Document 34, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    17. Anne Neumann & Juan Rosellón & Hannes Weigt, 2015. "Removing Cross-Border Capacity Bottlenecks in the European Natural Gas Market—A Proposed Merchant-Regulatory Mechanism," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 149-181, March.
    18. Jacob Goeree & Theo Offerman & Randolph Sloof, 2013. "Demand reduction and preemptive bidding in multi-unit license auctions," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(1), pages 52-87, March.
    19. Paula Sarmento & António Brandão, 2007. "Entry Deterrence and Entry Accommodation Strategies of a Multiproduct Firm Regulated with Dynamic Price Cap," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 13(1), pages 19-34, February.
    20. Paul L. Joskow, 2014. "Incentive Regulation in Theory and Practice: Electricity Distribution and Transmission Networks," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Regulation and Its Reform: What Have We Learned?, pages 291-344, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:matsoc:v:62:y:2011:i:2:p:95-100. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505565 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.