IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/109919.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Some Efficiency Aspects of Monopolistic Competition: Innovation, Variety and Transaction costs

Author

Listed:
  • Todorova, Tamara

Abstract

We stress some efficiency aspects of monopolistic competition justifying it on account of its tendency to innovate and the questionable excess capacity paradigm. Some further efficiency aspects revealed are product variety and transaction cost savings. We view the monopolistically competitive firm as an essential source of technological innovation, product variety and cost economies. While perfect competition is universally considered a benchmark and a social optimum, we consider it a strongly unrealistic theoretical setup where the monopolistically, rather than the perfectly, competitive firm turns out to be the true type of competition and social optimum in the real world of positive transaction costs. The monopolistically competitive firm not only offers product variety and innovation but is the optimal institutional arrangement under positive transaction costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Todorova, Tamara, 2021. "Some Efficiency Aspects of Monopolistic Competition: Innovation, Variety and Transaction costs," MPRA Paper 109919, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:109919
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/109919/1/MPRA_paper_109919.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Williamson, Oliver E, 1979. "Transaction-Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 233-261, October.
    2. Demsetz, Harold, 1982. "Barriers to Entry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(1), pages 47-57, March.
    3. Kenneth Arrow, 1962. "Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention," NBER Chapters, in: The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, pages 609-626, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joan Robinson, 1969. "The Economics of Imperfect Competition," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, edition 0, number 978-1-349-15320-6, October.
    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. Paul H. Jensen & Robin E. Stonecash, 2004. "The Efficiency of Public Sector Outsourcing Contracts: A Literature Review," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2004n29, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    2. Ullberg, Eskil, 2015. "Trade in Ideas: Performance and Behavioural Properties of Markets in Patents with Two-part Tariff," Ratio Working Papers 261, The Ratio Institute.
    3. Winter, Sidney G., 2006. "The logic of appropriability: From Schumpeter to Arrow to Teece," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 1100-1106, October.
    4. Griffith, Rachel & Lee, Sokbae & Straathof, Bas, 2017. "Recombinant innovation and the boundaries of the firm," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 34-56.
    5. Mowery, David C., 1998. "The changing structure of the US national innovation system: implications for international conflict and cooperation in R&D policy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 639-654, September.
    6. Elaine Mosakowski & Srilata Zaheer, 1999. "The Global Configuration of a Speculative Trading Operation: An Empirical Study of Foreign Exchange Trading," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 401-423, August.
    7. Ghafele, Roya & Gibert, Benjamin, 2012. "Efficiency through openness: the economic value proposition of open source software," MPRA Paper 38088, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Paul H. Jensen & Robin E. Stonecash, 2005. "Incentives and the Efficiency of Public Sector‐outsourcing Contracts," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(5), pages 767-787, December.
    9. Malina, Christiane, 2019. "A normative analysis of subsidization of all-electric vehicles in Germany," CAWM Discussion Papers 109, University of Münster, Münster Center for Economic Policy (MEP).
    10. Prpić, John, 2017. "The Theory of Crowd Capital," SocArXiv s6vnw, Center for Open Science.
    11. Peter Gorringe, 1987. "The Economic Institutions of Capitalism: Firms, Markets and Relational Contracting by Oliver E. Williamson," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 12(1), pages 125-143, June.
    12. Prud'homme, Dan & von Zedtwitz, Max, 2019. "Managing “forced” technology transfer in emerging markets: The case of China," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 25(3), pages 1-1.
    13. Mezzanotti, Filippo & Simcoe, Timothy, 2019. "Patent policy and American innovation after eBay: An empirical examination," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(5), pages 1271-1281.
    14. David Soberman & Hubert Gatignon, 2005. "Research Issues at the Boundary of Competitive Dynamics and Market Evolution," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 165-174, September.
    15. Sanders, Anselm Kamperman, 2006. "Limits to database protection: Fair use and scientific research exemptions," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 854-874, July.
    16. CHEAH, Sarah Lai-Yin & HO, Yuen-Ping & LI, Shiyu, 2020. "How the effect of opportunity discovery on innovation outcome differs between DIY laboratories and public research institutes: The role of industry turbulence and knowledge generation in the case of S," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    17. Breznitz, Dan & Zehavi, Amos, 2010. "The limits of capital: Transcending the public financer-private producer split in industrial R&D," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 301-312, March.
    18. Sakakibara, Mariko, 1997. "Evaluating government-sponsored R&D consortia in Japan: who benefits and how?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(4-5), pages 447-473, December.
    19. Gersbach, Hans & Schneider, Maik & Schneller, Olivier, 2010. "Optimal Mix of Applied and Basic Research, Distance to Frontier, and Openness," CEPR Discussion Papers 7795, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Dirk Czarnitzki & Hanna Hottenrott & Susanne Thorwarth, 2011. "Industrial research versus development investment: the implications of financial constraints," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 35(3), pages 527-544.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    efficiency; innovation; variety; monopolistic competition; perfect competition; transaction costs;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • O3 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:109919. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.