IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cte/werepe/39547.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

General equilibrium, welfare and policy when firms have market power

Author

Listed:
  • Moreno, Diego
  • Petrakis, Emmanuel

Abstract

We consider a simple private goods market economy and show that when firms have market power the equilibrium real wage, employment, real output, and labor share are less than under perfect competition. Contrary to common wisdom market concentration may have non-monotonic general equilibrium effects: the equilibrium allocation of a monopolistic economy may Pareto dominate that of an oligopolistic economy. Corporate taxes provide an appropriate instrument to pursue distributional objectives since, unlike taxes on labor income, they do not create additional deadweight losses. An appropriate minimum real wage improves efficiency and increases the labor share in a monopolistic economy, whereas in an oligopolistic economy its efficiency effects are uncertain due the existence of multiple equilibria.

Suggested Citation

  • Moreno, Diego & Petrakis, Emmanuel, 2024. "General equilibrium, welfare and policy when firms have market power," UC3M Working papers. Economics 39547, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    • Handle: RePEc:cte:werepe:39547
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://e-archivo.uc3m.es/rest/api/core/bitstreams/1e8f5cf5-fa00-4a47-bfbc-10ceaa78eb51/content
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jaskold Gabszewicz, Jean & Vial, Jean-Philippe, 1972. "Oligopoly "A la cournot" in a general equilibrium analysis," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 381-400, June.
    2. Shapiro, Carl, 2018. "Antitrust in a time of populism," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 714-748.
    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. Klaus Ritzberger, 2007. "Price normalization under imperfect competition," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(2), pages 365-368, November.
    2. Ken-Ichi Shimomura & Jacques-François Thisse, 2012. "Competition among the big and the small," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(2), pages 329-347, June.
    3. Joanna Poyago-Thotoky, 2003. "Optimal Environmental Taxation, R&D Subsidization and the Role of Market Conduct," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 15-26, Spring.
    4. J. Peter Neary, 2007. "Cross-Border Mergers as Instruments of Comparative Advantage," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(4), pages 1229-1257.
    5. Mercenier, Jean & Schmitt, Nicolas, 1996. "On Sunk Costs and Trade Liberalization in Applied General Equilibrium," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(3), pages 553-571, August.
    6. Jean-Marc Bonnisseau & Michael Florig, 2005. "Non-existence of Duopoly Equilibria: A Simple Numerical Example," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 85(1), pages 65-71, July.
    7. Suleyman Basak & Anna Pavlova, 2005. "Monopoly Power and the Firm’s Valuation: A Dynamic Analysis of Short versus Long-Term Policies," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Alessandro Citanna & John Donaldson & Herakles Polemarchakis & Paolo Siconolfi & Stephan E. Spear (ed.), Essays in Dynamic General Equilibrium Theory, pages 1-34, Springer.
    8. Dehez, Pierre & Dreze, Jacques H. & Suzuki, Takashi, 2003. "Imperfect competition a la Negishi, also with fixed costs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 219-237, June.
    9. Joanna Poyago-Thotoky, 2003. "Optimal Environmental Taxation, R&D Subsidization and the Role of Market Conduct," Finnish Economic Papers, Finnish Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 15-26, Spring.
    10. Ostroy, Joseph M & Zame, William R, 1994. "Nonatomic Economies and the Boundaries of Perfect Competition," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(3), pages 593-633, May.
    11. Luigi Ventura, 2004. "Investment Decisions and Normalization with Incomplete Markets: A Pitfall in Aggregating Shareholders' Preferences," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 3(1), pages 21-28, April.
    12. Tuinstra, J., 2000. "Price adjustment in a model of monopolistic competition," CeNDEF Working Papers 00-13, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance.
    13. Busetto, Francesca & Codognato, Giulio & Ghosal, Sayantan, 2012. "Noncooperative Oligopoly in Markets with a Continuum of Traders: A Limit Theorem," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 994, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    14. Schmutzler, Armin & Letina, Igor & Seibel, Regina, 2020. "Start-up Acquisitions and Innovation Strategies," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224631, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Martin Shubik & Myrna Holtz Wooders, 1982. "Approximate Cores of a General Class of Economies: Part II. Set-Up Costs and Firm Formation in Coalition Production Economies," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 619, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    16. Cripps, M.W. & Myles, G.D., 1988. "General Equilibrium And Imperfect Competition: Profit Feedback Effects And Price Normalisations," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 295, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    17. Azar, José, 2017. "Portfolio Diversification, Market Power, and the Theory of the Firm," IESE Research Papers D/1170, IESE Business School.
    18. Frolov, Daniil, 2019. "From institutions to extitutions to the post-institutional theory of institutional anomalies," MPRA Paper 95960, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Sep 2019.
    19. Julien, Ludovic A., 2013. "On Stackelberg competition in strategic multilateral exchange," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 59-75.
    20. J.Peter Neary, 2002. "Foreign Competition and Wage Inequality," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(4), pages 680-693, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    General Equilibrium;

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • D5 - Microeconomics - - General Equilibrium and Disequilibrium
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • L1 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance
    • L4 - Industrial Organization - - Antitrust Issues and Policies

    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:cte:werepe:39547. 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: Ana Poveda (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.eco.uc3m.es/ .

    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.