IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mlb/wpaper/767.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Structure Dominate Regulation? The Case of an Input Monopolist

Author

Listed:
  • King, S.P.

Abstract

This paper constructs a simple repeated game model to analyze how industry outcomes alter if a regulated input monopolist is allowed to integrate into the downstream retail market. Integration helps overcome double marginalization-a feature well known in the existing literature. Unlike existing static models, however, integration also makes tacit collusion more difficult in a repeated game framework. If the regulated input price exceeds marginal cost, an integrated monopolist has an incentive to increase retail sales as this raises upstream profits. It will be less willing to engage in any tacitly collusive conduct in the downstream market and it has a greater incentive to cheat on any collusive arrangement. We show that these effects may dominate input price regulation. A social planner may prefer the upstream monopoly to participate in the downstream market, even if integration leads to a higher regulated input price. The anti-competitive effects of the higher input price are more than offset by the pro-competitive effects of integration.

Suggested Citation

  • King, S.P., 2000. "Does Structure Dominate Regulation? The Case of an Input Monopolist," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 767, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mlb:wpaper:767
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/wpapers-00-01/767.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James W. Friedman, 1971. "A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    2. de Fontenay, C. & Gans, J.S., 1999. "Extending Market Power through Vertical Integration," Papers 99/2, New South Wales - School of Economics.
    3. Paul Geroski & David Thompson & Saadet Toker, 1989. "Vertical separation and price discrimination: cellular phones in the UK," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 83-103, November.
    4. Richard J. Gilbert & Michael H. Riordan, 1995. "Regulating Complementary Products: A Comparative Institutional Analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(2), pages 243-256, Summer.
    5. John Vickers, 1995. "Competition and Regulation in Vertically Related Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 62(1), pages 1-17.
    6. Mark Armstrong & Simon Cowan & John Vickers, 1994. "Regulatory Reform: Economic Analysis and British Experience," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262510790, December.
    7. John Vickers & George Yarrow, 1988. "Privatization: An Economic Analysis," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262720116, December.
    8. Economides, Nicholas, 1998. "The incentive for non-price discrimination by an input monopolist," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 271-284, May.
    9. McAfee, R Preston & Schwartz, Marius, 1994. "Opportunism in Multilateral Vertical Contracting: Nondiscrimination, Exclusivity, and Uniformity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 210-230, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Stephen P. King, 1997. "National Competition Policy," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 73(222), pages 270-284, September.
    2. Alexander Galetovic, 2003. "Integración Vertical en el Sector Eléctrico: Una guía para el usuario (Vertical integration in the electricity sector)," Documentos de Trabajo 158, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    3. Stephen P. King, 1999. "Price Discrimination, Separation and Access: Protecting Competition or Protecting Competitors?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 24(1), pages 21-35, June.
    4. 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.
    5. Christoph Bier & Dieter Schmidtchen, "undated". "„Golden-Gans“-Effekt, Preisdiskriminierungsgefahr und die Regulierung von Netznutzungsentgelten," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2006-1-1137, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    6. Armstrong, Mark, 2001. "The theory of access pricing and interconnection," MPRA Paper 15608, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Eduardo Saavedra, "undated". "Alternative Institutional Arrangements in Network Utilities: An Incomplete Contracting Approach," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv116, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.
    8. Mandy, David M. & Mayo, John W. & Sappington, David E.M., 2016. "Targeting efforts to raise rivals' costs: Moving from “Whether” to “Whom”," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-15.
    9. Bier, Christoph & Schmidtchen, Dieter, 2006. ""Golden-Gans"-Effekt, Preisdiskriminierungsgefahr und die Regulierung von Netznutzungsentgelten," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2006-01, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    10. Fiocco, Raffaele & Guo, Dongyu, 2020. "Regulatory risk, vertical integration, and upstream investment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 128(C).
    11. Federico Boffa & John Panzar, 2012. "Bottleneck co-ownership as a regulatory alternative," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 41(2), pages 201-215, April.
    12. 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.
    13. César Costa Alves de Mattos, 2001. "Integração Vertical em Telecomunicações e Fechamento através de Preços de Acesso," Anais do XXIX Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 29th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 065, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    14. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    15. Bottasso, Anna & Conti, Maurizio, 2003. "Cost Inefficiency in the English and Welsh Water Industry: An Heteroskedastic Stochastic Cost Frontier Approach," Economics Discussion Papers 8872, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    16. Parker, David, 2001. "Economic Regulation: A Preliminary Literature Review and Summary of Research Questions Arising," Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC) Working papers 30616, University of Manchester, Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM).
    17. John S. Heywood & Debashis Pal, 2004. "Successive Monopolies and Regulation in a Spatial Model," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 72(2), pages 167-178, March.
    18. Stephen King & Rohan Pitchford, 2008. "Private or Public? Towards a Taxonomy of Optimal Ownership and Management Regimes," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(266), pages 366-377, September.
    19. Felix Höffler & Sebastian Kranz, 2011. "Imperfect legal unbundling of monopolistic bottlenecks," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 39(3), pages 273-292, June.
    20. Eduardo Saavedra, "undated". "Opportunistic Behavior and Legal Disputes in the Chilean Electricity Sector," ILADES-UAH Working Papers inv130, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    MONOPOLIES ; GAMES ; PRICES ; MARKET;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    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:mlb:wpaper:767. 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: Dandapani Lokanathan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demelau.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.