IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecorec/v99y2023i324p32-57.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Product Market Competition and its Implications for the Australian Economy

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Hambur

Abstract

This paper documents firm mark‐ups and competition in Australia, and their impact on productivity, using administrative data. I find that mark‐ups increased by around 5 per cent since the mid 2000s, less than previously documented for Australia and slightly less than documented for the average advanced economy. While part appears to reflect technological change, part appears to reflect an increase in market power. This increase appears to explain part of the slowdown in productivity growth observed in Australia over the past decade, by slowing the efficient reallocation of resources from low productivity to high productivity firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Hambur, 2023. "Product Market Competition and its Implications for the Australian Economy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 99(324), pages 32-57, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:99:y:2023:i:324:p:32-57
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-4932.12707
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12707
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-4932.12707?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Traina, James, 2018. "Is Aggregate Market Power Increasing? Production Trends Using Financial Statements," Working Papers 272, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State.
    2. Marc J. Melitz & Sašo Polanec, 2015. "Dynamic Olley-Pakes productivity decomposition with entry and exit," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 46(2), pages 362-375, June.
    3. Philippe Aghion & Nick Bloom & Richard Blundell & Rachel Griffith & Peter Howitt, 2005. "Competition and Innovation: an Inverted-U Relationship," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 701-728.
    4. Criscuolo, Chiara & Andrews, Dan & Gal, Peter N., 2019. "The best versus the rest: divergence across firms during the global productivity slowdown," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 103405, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Jan De Loecker, 2011. "Product Differentiation, Multiproduct Firms, and Estimating the Impact of Trade Liberalization on Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(5), pages 1407-1451, September.
    6. Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2017. "Investmentless Growth: An Empirical Investigation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(2 (Fall)), pages 89-190.
    7. Andrew Leigh & Adam Triggs, 2021. "Common Ownership of Competing Firms: Evidence from Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 97(318), pages 333-349, September.
    8. Ufuk Akcigit & Sina T. Ates, 2021. "Ten Facts on Declining Business Dynamism and Lessons from Endogenous Growth Theory," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 257-298, January.
    9. Paul L. E. Grieco & Shengyu Li & Hongsong Zhang, 2016. "Production Function Estimation With Unobserved Input Price Dispersion," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57, pages 665-690, May.
    10. Bond, Steve & Hashemi, Arshia & Kaplan, Greg & Zoch, Piotr, 2021. "Some unpleasant markup arithmetic: Production function elasticities and their estimation from production data," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 1-14.
    11. Chad Syverson, 2019. "Macroeconomics and Market Power: Context, Implications, and Open Questions," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(3), pages 23-43, Summer.
    12. Esteban Rossi-Hansberg & Pierre-Daniel Sarte & Nicholas Trachter, 2021. "Diverging Trends in National and Local Concentration," NBER Macroeconomics Annual, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 115-150.
    13. Amit Gandhi & Salvador Navarro & David A. Rivers, 2020. "On the Identification of Gross Output Production Functions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(8), pages 2973-3016.
    14. Jan de Loecker & Jan Eeckhout & Simon Mongey, 2021. "Quantifying Market Power and Business Dynamism in the Macroeconomy," Working Papers 1251, Barcelona School of Economics.
    15. Jan De Loecker & Paul T. Scott, 2016. "Estimating market power Evidence from the US Brewing Industry," NBER Working Papers 22957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Paul L. E. Grieco & Shengyu Li & Hongsong Zhang, 2016. "Production Function Estimation With Unobserved Input Price Dispersion," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(2), pages 665-690, May.
    17. Olley, G Steven & Pakes, Ariel, 1996. "The Dynamics of Productivity in the Telecommunications Equipment Industry," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(6), pages 1263-1297, November.
    18. Jan De Loecker & Paul T. Scott, 2016. "Estimating market power Evidence from the US Brewing Industry," NBER Working Papers 22957, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Matias Covarrubias & Germán Gutiérrez & Thomas Philippon, 2019. "From Good to Bad Concentration? US Industries over the Past 30 Years," NBER Chapters, in: NBER Macroeconomics Annual 2019, volume 34, pages 1-46, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Nicolas Crouzet & Janice C. Eberly, 2019. "Understanding Weak Capital Investment: the Role of Market Concentration and Intangibles," NBER Working Papers 25869, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Daniel A. Ackerberg & Kevin Caves & Garth Frazer, 2015. "Identification Properties of Recent Production Function Estimators," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 2411-2451, November.
    22. Sasan Bakhtiari, 2021. "Trends in Market Concentration of Australian Industries," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 54(1), pages 57-75, March.
    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. Monique Champion & Chris Edmond & Jonathan Hambur, "undated". "Competition, Markups, and Inflation: Evidence from Australian Firm-level Data," RBA Annual Conference Papers acp2023-05, Reserve Bank of Australia, revised Nov 2023.

    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. Kritikos, Alexander S. & Schiersch, Alexander & Stiel, Caroline, 2021. "The Productivity Puzzle in Business Services," IZA Discussion Papers 14610, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Sampi Bravo,James Robert Ezequiel & Jooste,Charl & Vostroknutova,Ekaterina, 2021. "Identification Properties for Estimating the Impact of Regulation on Markups and Productivity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9523, The World Bank.
    3. Alexander S. Kritikos & Alexander Schiersch & Caroline Stiel, 2022. "The productivity shock in business services," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(3), pages 1273-1299, October.
    4. Geoffrey Barrows & Hélène Ollivier & Ariell Reshef, 2023. "Production Function Estimation with Multi-Destination Firms," CESifo Working Paper Series 10716, CESifo.
    5. Philipp Meinen & Ana Cristina Soares, 2022. "Markups and Financial Shocks," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(647), pages 2471-2499.
    6. Samuel Vika Mhlanga & Neil Andrew Rankin, 2021. "Fixed costs, markups and concentration in Eswatini (Swaziland): A firm‐level analysis of panel data," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 89(3), pages 391-416, September.
    7. Diane Coyle & John McHale & Ioannis Bournakis & Jen-Chung Mei, 2023. "Recent Trends in Firm-Level Total Factor Productivity in the United Kingdom: New Measures, New Puzzles," Working Papers 036, The Productivity Institute.
    8. Emir Malikov & Shunan Zhao & Jingfang Zhang, 2024. "A System Approach to Structural Identification of Production Functions with Multi-Dimensional Productivity," Advances in Econometrics, in: Essays in Honor of Subal Kumbhakar, volume 46, pages 211-263, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    9. Bowen Zheng & Mengjie Zhang & Xuefang Zhang, 2022. "The rise of market power and firms' investment: Evidence from China," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(5), pages 4807-4830, December.
    10. Shunan Zhao & Bing Qian & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2020. "Estimation of productivity and markups with price dispersion: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing during economic transition," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(2), pages 666-699, October.
    11. Emir Malikov & Jingfang Zhang & Shunan Zhao & Subal C. Kumbhakar, 2023. "Accounting for Cross-Location Technological Heterogeneity in the Measurement of Operations Efficiency and Productivity," Papers 2302.13430, arXiv.org.
    12. Laurens Cherchye & Thomas Demuynck & Bram De Rock & Cédric Duprez & Glenn Magerman & Marijn Verschelde, 2021. "Structural Identification of Productivity under Biased Technological Change∗," Working Papers ECARES 2021-28, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Philipp R. Steinbrunner, 2023. "May It Be a Little Bit More of Market Power? On Productivity Growth and Competition," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 123-170, December.
    14. Ganglmair, Bernhard & Hahn, Nadine & Hellwig, Michael & Kann, Alexander & Peters, Bettina & Tsanko, Ilona, 2020. "Price markups, innovation, and productivity: Evidence from Germany," ZEW Expertises, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, volume 8, number 222995.
    15. Mauro Caselli & Arpita Chatterjee & Shengyu Li, 2023. "Productivity and Quality of Multi-product Firms," Discussion Papers 2023-10, School of Economics, The University of New South Wales.
    16. Chen Yeh & Claudia Macaluso & Brad Hershbein, 2022. "Monopsony in the US Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(7), pages 2099-2138, July.
    17. Joel Stiebale & Florian Szücs, 2022. "Mergers and market power: evidence from rivals' responses in European markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 53(4), pages 678-702, December.
    18. Thomas Hasenzagl & Luis Perez, 2023. "The Micro-Aggregated Profit Share," Papers 2309.12945, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2023.
    19. Maarten de Ridder, 2022. "Market power and innovation in the intangible economy," POID Working Papers 064, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. James Harrigan & Ariell Reshef & Farid Toubal, 2018. "Techies, Trade, and Skill-Biased Productivity," NBER Working Papers 25295, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:bla:ecorec:v:99:y:2023:i:324:p:32-57. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.html .

    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.