IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jitecd/v14y2005i1p19-42.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal Trade and Privatization Policies in an International Duopoly with Cost Asymmetry

Author

Listed:
  • Winston Chang

Abstract

This paper examines optimal trade and privatization policies in a mixed duopoly in which a pubic home firm competes with a more efficient foreign firm. The home firm is a Cournot competitor or a Stackelberg leader. The home government chooses the degree of privatization and import tariff to maximize national welfare. The paper examines the policy effects on industry equilibrium with general demand and cost structures and shows that the optimal level of privatization depends crucially upon the strategic substitutability-complementarity assumption. It further shows that if both policies are used under linear demand and quadratic costs, the equilibrium prices, firms' outputs, welfare and tariff rates are the same under Cournot and Stackelberg competition, and price equals the home firm's marginal cost. Neither full nationalization nor full privatization is optimal under Cournot, but full nationalization is always optimal under Stackelberg competition. If only one policy is used, a reduction in government's ownership of the public firm under Cournot competition and constant marginal costs calls for a higher optimal tariff rate. This result does not carry over to the case of increasing marginal costs, although the optimal tariff is lower under full nationalization than under full privatization.

Suggested Citation

  • Winston Chang, 2005. "Optimal Trade and Privatization Policies in an International Duopoly with Cost Asymmetry," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(1), pages 19-42.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jitecd:v:14:y:2005:i:1:p:19-42
    DOI: 10.1080/0963819042000333234
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0963819042000333234
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/0963819042000333234?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
    ---><---

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

    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:taf:jitecd:v:14:y:2005:i:1:p:19-42. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJTE20 .

    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.