Rising Corporate Market Power

Rising Corporate Market Power PDF Author: Ufuk Akcigit
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513512080
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Corporate market power has risen in recent decades, and new estimates in this note suggest that the likely wave of small and medium-sized enterprise bankruptcies from the ongoing pandemic will further strengthen market concentration. Whether and how policymakers should address this issue is hotly debated. This note provides new evidence on the policy relevance of rising market power and highlights possible implications for the design of competition policy frameworks and macroeconomic policies.

Rising Corporate Market Power

Rising Corporate Market Power PDF Author: Ufuk Akcigit
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1513512080
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 34

Get Book Here

Book Description
Corporate market power has risen in recent decades, and new estimates in this note suggest that the likely wave of small and medium-sized enterprise bankruptcies from the ongoing pandemic will further strengthen market concentration. Whether and how policymakers should address this issue is hotly debated. This note provides new evidence on the policy relevance of rising market power and highlights possible implications for the design of competition policy frameworks and macroeconomic policies.

The Profit Paradox

The Profit Paradox PDF Author: Jan Eeckhout
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691224293
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
A pioneering account of the surging global tide of market power—and how it stifles workers around the world In an era of technological progress and easy communication, it might seem reasonable to assume that the world’s working people have never had it so good. But wages are stagnant and prices are rising, so that everything from a bottle of beer to a prosthetic hip costs more. Economist Jan Eeckhout shows how this is due to a small number of companies exploiting an unbridled rise in market power—the ability to set prices higher than they could in a properly functioning competitive marketplace. Drawing on his own groundbreaking research and telling the stories of common workers throughout, he demonstrates how market power has suffocated the world of work, and how, without better mechanisms to ensure competition, it could lead to disastrous market corrections and political turmoil. The Profit Paradox describes how, over the past forty years, a handful of companies have reaped most of the rewards of technological advancements—acquiring rivals, securing huge profits, and creating brutally unequal outcomes for workers. Instead of passing on the benefits of better technologies to consumers through lower prices, these “superstar” companies leverage new technologies to charge even higher prices. The consequences are already immense, from unnecessarily high prices for virtually everything, to fewer startups that can compete, to rising inequality and stagnating wages for most workers, to severely limited social mobility. A provocative investigation into how market power hurts average working people, The Profit Paradox also offers concrete solutions for fixing the problem and restoring a healthy economy.

Global Declining Competition

Global Declining Competition PDF Author: Mr.Federico J Diez
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1498311636
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
Using a new firm-level dataset on private and listed firms from 20 countries, we document five stylized facts on market power in global markets. First, competition has declined around the world, measured as a moderate increase in average firm markups during 2000- 2015. Second, the markup increase is driven by already high-markup firms (top decile of the markup distribution) that charge increasing markups. Third, markups increased mostly among advanced economies but not in emerging markets. Fourth, there is a non-monotonic relation between firm size and markups that is first decreasing and then increasing. Finally, the increase is mostly driven by increases within incumbents and also by market share reallocation towards high-markup entrants.

A Step Ahead

A Step Ahead PDF Author: Martha Martinez Licetti
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464809461
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
Sustainable economic development has played a major role in the decline of global poverty in the past two decades. There is no doubt that competitive markets are key drivers of economic growth and productivity. They are also valuable channels for consumer welfare. Competition policy is a powerful tool for complementing efforts to alleviate poverty and bring about shared prosperity. An effective competition policy involves measures that enable contestability and firm entry and rivalry, while ensuring the enforcement of antitrust laws and state aid control. Governments from emerging and developing economies are increasingly requesting pragmatic solutions for effective competition policy implementation, as well as recommendations for pro-competitive sectoral policies. A Step Ahead: Competition Policy for Shared Prosperity and Inclusive Growth puts forward a research agenda that advocates the importance of market competition, effective market regulation, and competition policies for achieving inclusive growth and shared prosperity in emerging and developing economies. It is the result of a global partnership and shared commitment between the World Bank Group and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Part I of the book brings together existing empirical evidence on the benefits of competition for household welfare. It covers the elimination of anticompetitive practices and regulations that restrict competition in key markets and highlights the effects of competition on small producers and employment. Part II of the book focuses on the distributional effects of competition policies and how enforcement can be better aligned with shared prosperity goals.

World Economic Outlook, April 2019

World Economic Outlook, April 2019 PDF Author: International Monetary Fund. Research Dept.
Publisher: International Monetary Fund
ISBN: 1484397487
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
After strong growth in 2017 and early 2018, global economic activity slowed notably in the second half of last year, reflecting a confluence of factors affecting major economies. China’s growth declined following a combination of needed regulatory tightening to rein in shadow banking and an increase in trade tensions with the United States. The euro area economy lost more momentum than expected as consumer and business confidence weakened and car production in Germany was disrupted by the introduction of new emission standards; investment dropped in Italy as sovereign spreads widened; and external demand, especially from emerging Asia, softened. Elsewhere, natural disasters hurt activity in Japan. Trade tensions increasingly took a toll on business confidence and, so, financial market sentiment worsened, with financial conditions tightening for vulnerable emerging markets in the spring of 2018 and then in advanced economies later in the year, weighing on global demand. Conditions have eased in 2019 as the US Federal Reserve signaled a more accommodative monetary policy stance and markets became more optimistic about a US–China trade deal, but they remain slightly more restrictive than in the fall.

The Power of Creative Destruction

The Power of Creative Destruction PDF Author: Philippe Aghion
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674971167
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
From one of the world’s leading economists and his coauthors, a cutting-edge analysis of what drives economic growth and a blueprint for prosperity under capitalism. Crisis seems to follow crisis. Inequality is rising, growth is stagnant, the environment is suffering, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed every crack in the system. We hear more and more calls for radical change, even the overthrow of capitalism. But the answer to our problems is not revolution. The answer is to create a better capitalism by understanding and harnessing the power of creative destruction—innovation that disrupts, but that over the past two hundred years has also lifted societies to previously unimagined prosperity. To explain, Philippe Aghion, Céline Antonin, and Simon Bunel draw on cutting-edge theory and evidence to examine today’s most fundamental economic questions, including the roots of growth and inequality, competition and globalization, the determinants of health and happiness, technological revolutions, secular stagnation, middle-income traps, climate change, and how to recover from economic shocks. They show that we owe our modern standard of living to innovations enabled by free-market capitalism. But we also need state intervention with the appropriate checks and balances to simultaneously foster ongoing economic creativity, manage the social disruption that innovation leaves in its wake, and ensure that yesterday’s superstar innovators don’t pull the ladder up after them to thwart tomorrow’s. A powerful and ambitious reappraisal of the foundations of economic success and a blueprint for change, The Power of Creative Destruction shows that a fair and prosperous future is ultimately ours to make.

Market Power and the Economy

Market Power and the Economy PDF Author: Wallace C. Peterson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400926731
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
A situation in economics that is little short of scandalous is the almost total neglect by mainstream economics of the importance of power in economic affairs. Power in this context means the ability to bend market forces in one's favor, influencing and shaping key economic variables such as prices, wages, and other income determinants. As John Kenneth Galbraith as tutely observes: a dominant fact in economic life is the desire of people everywhere and in all circumstances to get control over their personal lives and their incomes-to escape from the "tyranny of the market. " Power is the means to this end. Ever since Adam Smith, economists have been fascinated by and lavish in their praise for the workings of the market. All modern textbooks are built around Smithian ideas about markets and the way the "invisible hand" works through competition for society's better ment. Yet one can search nearly in vain through leading texts, under graduate and graduate alike, for any reference to market or economic power. This is the situation in spite of the fact that the drive for power, the urge to get control over one's income, permeates the economy as much as does competition. This is a scandal! For a discipline that claims for itself the mantle of a science-one which wants to be accorded the same respect given the natural sciences-it is almost incomprehensible that it should ignore a major force at work in the real economic world.

The Great Reversal

The Great Reversal PDF Author: Thomas Philippon
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674237544
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
American markets, once a model for the world, are giving up on competition. Thomas Philippon blames the unchecked efforts of corporate lobbyists. Instead of earning profits by investing and innovating, powerful firms use political pressure to secure their advantages. The result is less efficient markets, leading to higher prices and lower wages.

Market definition and market power in the platform economy

Market definition and market power in the platform economy PDF Author: Jens-Uwe Franck
Publisher: Centre on Regulation in Europe asbl (CERRE)
ISBN:
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
With the rise of digital platforms and the natural tendency of markets involving platforms to become concentrated, competition authorities and courts are more frequently in a position to investigate and decide merger and abuse cases that involve platforms. This report provides guidance on how to define markets and on how to assess market power when dealing with two-sided platforms. DEFINITION Competition authorities and courts are well advised to uniformly use a multi-markets approach when defining markets in the context of two-sided platforms. The multi-markets approach is the more flexible instrument compared to the competing single-market approach that defines a single market for both sides of a platform, as the former naturally accounts for different substitution possibilities by the user groups on the two sides of the platform. While one might think of conditions under which a single-market approach could be feasible, the necessary conditions are so severe that it would only be applicable under rare circumstances. To fully appreciate business activities in platform markets from a competition law point of view, and to do justice to competition law’s purpose, which is to protect consumer welfare, the legal concept of a “market” should not be interpreted as requiring a price to be paid by one party to the other. It is not sufficient to consider the activities on the “unpaid side” of the platform only indirectly by way of including them in the competition law analysis of the “paid side” of the platform. Such an approach would exclude certain activities and ensuing positive or negative effects on consumer welfare altogether from the radar of competition law. Instead, competition practice should recognize straightforwardly that there can be “markets” for products offered free of charge, i.e. without monetary consideration by those who receive the product. ASSESSMENT The application of competition law often requires an assessment of market power. Using market shares as indicators of market power, in addition to all the difficulties in standard markets, raises further issues for two-sided platforms. When calculating revenue shares, the only reasonable option is to use the sum of revenues on all sides of the platform. Then, such shares should not be interpreted as market shares as they are aggregated over two interdependent markets. Large revenue shares appear to be a meaningful indicator of market power if all undertakings under consideration serve the same sides. However, they are often not meaningful if undertakings active in the relevant markets follow different business models. Given potentially strong cross-group external effects, market shares are less apt in the context of two-sided platforms to indicate market power (or the lack of it). Barriers to entry are at the core of persistent market power and, thus, the entrenchment of incumbent platforms. They deserve careful examination by competition authorities. Barriers to entry may arise due to users’ coordination failure in the presence of network effect. On two-sided platforms, users on both sides of the market have to coordinate their expectations. Barriers to entry are more likely to be present if an industry does not attract new users and if it does not undergo major technological change. Switching costs and network effects may go hand in hand: consumer switching costs sometimes depend on the number of platform users and, in this case, barriers to entry from consumer switching costs increase with platform size. Since market power is related to barriers to entry, the absence of entry attempts may be seen as an indication of market power. However, entry threats may arise from firms offering quite different services, as long as they provide a new home for users’ attention and needs.

In Defense of Monopoly

In Defense of Monopoly PDF Author: Richard B. McKenzie
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472901141
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
In Defense of Monopoly offers an unconventional but empirically grounded argument in favor of market monopolies. Authors McKenzie and Lee claim that conventional, static models exaggerate the harm done by real-world monopolies, and they show why some degree of monopoly presence is necessary to maximize the improvement of human welfare over time. Inspired by Joseph Schumpeter's suggestion that market imperfections can drive an economy's long-term progress, In Defense of Monopoly defies conventional assumptions to show readers why an economic system's failure to efficiently allocate its resources is actually a necessary precondition for maximizing the system's long-term performance: the perfectly fluid, competitive economy idealized by most economists is decidedly inferior to one characterized by market entry and exit restrictions or costs. An economy is not a board game in which players compete for a limited number of properties, nor is it much like the kind of blackboard games that economists use to develop their monopoly models. As McKenzie and Lee demonstrate, the creation of goods and services in the real world requires not only competition but the prospect of gains beyond a normal competitive rate of return.