The Anti-Combines Laws & Merger Types

   The main importance of anti-combined policy (antimonopoly policy) is ideas to prevent industrial concentration or monopolization, to achieve locative efficiency and to promote competition. Even if many economists say that these are the main aims of this policy some of them may argue that anti-combined policies aren’t so effective and their goals aren’t always achieved.
   The main important anti-monopolistic idea is that they produce less output and charge higher prices than firms from competitive market system. In pure competition firms produce output quantity where P=MC. This equation is so important because P represents benefit that society gains from extra unit of output, while MC is the cost that society is ready to pay for that extra unit. When this equation occurs (P=MC) society doesn’t gain any higher total benefit by producing one more or one less unit of output. However, a monopolist doesn’t maximize profit by equating marginal benefit (not price) with marginal cost.  In this case, there is an under allocation of resources to this monopolized products, so that economic well-being of society is less than it would be with greater competition.
   It is said that in nineteenth century the market forces in monopolized industries don’t provide sufficient control over prices to protect consumers, achieve locative efficiency and get a fair competition. So there were two methods by which a government could control these market forces:

• Regulatory agencies: In the markets where products or producing technology creates a natural monopoly, the government organizes public regulatory agencies that control economic behavior.
• Anti-combined laws: in some kinds of market systems this control took form of anti-combined or anti-monopoly legislation that prevents the growth and development of a monopoly.

Anti-combined legislation depends on corporate size and concentration. That’s why it’s important to examine all merger types.

Merger Types
   There are three basic merger types. Let’s examine and describe them carefully bellow:

1. A horizontal merger represents a merger between competitors that sell similar products in the market.
2. A vertical merger is a merger between some firms at different stages of production process.  An example can be a merger between a firm that produces glass and another that produces plastic so that they may create windows that are sound-proof. Another example is that Pepsi, which is a supplier of soft drinks, and Pizza Hut, so that they supply food and drinks for these fast-food firms.
3. A conglomerate merger may be defined as any merger that isn’t horizontal or vertical; it is a combination of firms in different industries or firms that operate in different geographical areas. This type of merger can extent the line of goods sold or combines some unrelated companies. An example of conglomerate merger is a union between Pizza Hut and some vehicle producing firms.

Technological advantage and efficiency

      Technological advance contributes enormously to economics efficiency. New and better products and processes enable the society to produce more goods at a less price, and produce a higher-valued mix of output.

 Productive efficiency
       Technological advance improves productive efficiency by increasing the productivity of inputs and by reducing the average total costs. In enables society to produce the same amount of goods and services by using fewer resources, so that it frees unused resources and produce something else from them. If society needs now more less-expensive goods, process of innovation helps to gain greater quantity of output by sacrifying fewer resources used as input. We may state that process innovation increase productive efficiency: it reduces society’s cost of whatever mix of goods and services it wants and thus it is an important factor that shifts economy’s production possibilities curve by shifting it rightwards.
Allocative efficiency
   Technological advance used at production process of various goods increase the allocative efficiency by giving society more desired mix of goods and services.  Consumers are willing to buy a new product rather than an older one only if the new one increases the total utility obtained from usage of the same quantity of scarce resources. That’s obviously that new product (and new mix of products) will create a higher total utility for society. That’s why demand for old product declines and demand for the new one increases. High economic profit gained from the new product attracts resources away from less-wanted by society uses to the production of new item.  This shifting of resources continues until marginal cost and marginal benefit equalize each other.
   However, innovation (either of product or price) may create a monopoly power in the market through patents and through other advantages of being first. When a new monopoly power results from an innovation, society may lose a part of its efficiency it otherwise would have gained from this innovation.  The reason is that monopolist may keep product’s price above marginal cost.
   Innovation may reduce or even destroy monopoly power by providing competition somewhere it didn’t previously exist. Economic efficiency is enhance after this event occurs, because this new product helps to push the prices down, close to marginal cost and minimum average total costs (ATV). Innovation that leads to greater competition in an industry reduces output-restrictions and monopoly prices.

Creative Destruction
   Innovation may even generate a creative destruction, in which creation of new products and production methods simultaneously destroys the market position of existing monopolies and old ways of doing business.
   Examples of creative destructions: movies brought new competition to theatres, which can be shown one at a time, but movies latter were challenged by television, aluminum cans and plastic bottles also displaced glass bottles in many uses, e-mail has challenged the postal service.
   Schumpeter says that an innovator will displace any monopolist that no longer delivers superior performance, but this idea is most treated as a wishful thinking nowadays. In this view, idea that creative destruction is automatic, but it neglects somehow the ability of well-established firms to provide shelter by themselves or by lobbying government to do it. This idea ignores differences between legal freedom of entry and economic reality of entering potential newcomers to concentrated industries.
   In this case dominant firm(s) may use strategies as buyouts, selective price-cutting, massive advertising to block the entry and competition from existing rivals and appearing innovative firms. Moreover, some firms may be able to persuade government to give them subsidies, tax-break, tariff-protection to strengthen their market power.
   In conclusion, while innovation increases economic efficiency; in some cases it may lead to expanding of monopoly power. Moreover, innovation may destroy monopoly power, but this process is neither automatic nor inevitable. However, technological change, innovation and efficiency doesn’t always bring monopoly power.

Optimal amount of Research and Development (R&D)

How do firms decide what amount of research and development to use? This depends on the amount of marginal benefit and marginal cost firm gets after R&D activity. This decision comes from one basic rule of economics: In order to get the greatest profit a firm should expand a specific activity until marginal benefit (MB) will be equal to its marginal costs (MC). If a firm sees that a R&D activity brings more marginal benefit than the marginal cost then this firm should expand its activity. However, if marginal benefit is less than marginal cost then this R&D activity should stop or shouldn’t be started. R&D spending decisions is a complex one, because it involves a possible future gain for present sacrifice. While R&D spending is immediate the expected benefits are uncertain and may occur at some possible future point in time. The MB=MC idea is still relevant for R&D decisions.

Spending in R&D
In order to obtain funds for R&D activities firms have several options:
  Bank loans– Some firms are able to finance their R&D activities by obtaining loans from banks or other type of financial institutions. The cost of using this kind of funds is the interest rate paid to the lender. The marginal cost is the Future Value (FV) of money borrowed.
Bonds– Profitable firms may borrow funds for R&D by issuing bonds and selling them. In this case, interest is the cost paid by bondholders to lenders. In this case, again, marginal cost is the interest rate paid for money borrowed.
Retained earnings– some big firms may finance their R&D activity by retaining some earnings. In this case firm retains a part of its profit rather than paying dividends to its owners. Some undistributed corporate profit, called retained earnings, can be used to finance R&D activity. The marginal cost in this case is the rate that could be earned from interest as deposits in financial institutions.
Venture capital– A small start-up firm may be able to attract venture capital to attract R&D projects. Venture capital is simply money, not real capital. Venture capital is part of household savings that is used to finance high-risk business venture in exchange of possible future share if thus ventures succeed. Marginal cost of this type of financing is the share of expected profit that business will have to pay to these people that offered this money.
Personal savings– Sometimes entrepreneurs may finance R&D activities from their own savings. In this case marginal cost is the forgone interest rate.
To sum up, we may state that whatever are the funds for R&D, the marginal cost in all the cases is forgone interest rate, i. Let’s assume that interest rate is the same for all amount of money needed. Also, let’s say that a firm call EcoMoney must pay an interest rate of 10% for the least expensive funding available to it. Let’s draw a graph called interest-rate cost-of-funds curve that denotes marginal cost of each amount of money borrowed for 10% interest rate and is shown simply by a horizontal line. Let’s make a graph and a table that depicts this situation.

With this information EcoMoney want to determine how much R&D to finance in the next year.
Expected Rate of Return
Firm’s marginal benefit from each dollar spent on R&D is it is profit (or return) gained from it. Thus R&D is expected to result in a new product or production method that will increase firm’s revenue. This return isn’t guaranteed but it is possible, so there is a risk to invest money in research and development process. Let’s suppose that after considering all risks EcoMoney constructs an expected-rate of return versus research and development cost graph and table. Expected-rate of return curve is marginal benefit of each dollar spent on R&D. This curve slope is negative because of diminishing returns from R&D expenditures. A firm will direct its initial R&D expenditures to the highest expected-rate of return activities and additional funding will be invested in activities that offer successively lower rates of returns. Thus firm increases R&D spending it uses to finance R&D activities of progressively lower rates of returns.


Optimal R&D spending
The figure bellow combines interest-rate-cost-of-funds curve and the expected rate of return curve. These two curves intersect at EcoMoney’s optimal amount of R&D, which is 35 million of dollars. This result can also be determined from the previous tables that showed amount of funding at various rates of return and interest cost of borrowing (in this case 10%). AT this point MR and MC from expenditures on R&D are equal. The firm should undertake all R&D expenditures up to 35 million of dollars, since these parameters yield higher marginal benefit and expected rate of return, r, than interest costs of borrowing money, i.
Optimal vs. affordable R&D
As we know there can be too much, or too little of a good thing. So it is with R&D and technological advance. The figures from above show that R&D expenditures make sense as long as the expected return equals or exceeds the expenditures needed to finance it. Many R&D expenditures may be affordable but also most of them aren’t worthwhile, because their marginal benefit is less than their marginal cost.
Not Guaranteed returns
    The outcome of R&D researches are expected, but not guaranteed. At the time of decision, it may look worthwhile, but they can’t predict with high accuracy future events, that’s why sometimes some R&D decisions are like an informed gamble and not as typical business decision. Invention and innovation carry with them high possibility of risk. So there may be a successful outcome or a costly disappointment.

Price leadership Model

     This model is a very interesting one. It explains some phenomena that are happening in oligopolistic type markets. So what does it means? Price leadership is an implicit (invisible) agreement among oligopolists by which they can coordinate prices without involving in price collusion based on secret meeting or formal agreements. This kind of method requires the “dominant firm”  (largest or most efficient one) to initiate price changes, so that all other firms more or less will try to follow this leader.  In many industries cement, fertilizers, cigarettes, cars and diverse machineries industries practiced this price leadership.
Tactics
   Price leadership in industries suggests that the price leader may use some of the following tactics:

  Price changes (infrequent)
   Since the price change may create the risk that the rivals won’t follow it, price regulations should be made only infrequently. Price leader shouldn’t respond to daily small increases in costs and demand.  Price should be modified just in the case when costs and demand have changed greatly, for example the price of row materials or wages of workers increased rapidly, or government excised higher taxes.
Communications
   Price leader sometimes communicates higher costs other oligopolistic firms by means of speeches of major executives or press. By publicizing the need to raise the price, price leader seeks other rivals to inform and to agree about price modifications.

Limit Pricing
   Price leader may not always choose the price that maximizes the profits in short-run for the industry, because it wants to block the entry to this industry of new firms. If economies of scale of existing firms are the major barrier, then new firms can pass this obstacle if the existing firms, including price leader, set a high-price for the goods and services they produce. So, new small firms may survive only if the industry sets a very high price. To block the entry of new firms to this oligopolistic market system, this price leader may keep the price bellow short-run maximizing level. This strategy of blocking entry from the new firms is called limit pricing.
Price wars
   Sometime price leadership in oligopolistic market system may end up at least temporarily or may result in price wars.  Most price wars sometimes run their course. When the firms realize that low prices are reducing their revenues dramatically, they may “offer” price leadership to other industry’ leading firms. That firms starts to rise prices and other businesses are willing to follow.

Obstacles to collusion

     Cartels (that are a formal agreement among various firms in industry to set the prices of products and establish the outputs of the individual firms or to divide the market among them) and other arrangements are difficult to create and to maintain. Let’s describe some barriers to collusion for various industries:
Demand and Cost differences
   Oligopolists face different cost of production and demand curves, so it’s difficult for them to agree on price, which is true for industries that produce differentiated products and change them frequently. Even if firms have standardized products, they usually have different market shares and operate at different degrees of productive efficiency. That’s why even homogeneous oligopolistic firms may have different demand and cost curves.
   Differences in demand and cost mean that even profit-maximizing price and output will be different among firms; there will be no single price acceptable by all firms. Price collusion depends on concessions and compromises which are not easily to obtain, since there are many obstacles to collusion.
     Number of Businesses
       So, it’s obvious the fact that more firms being present in an industry, harder is to create a cartel or other kind of price collusion. An agreement on price set is relatively hard to accomplish when there are 3 or 4 firms, but what if there are 10 firms that share each about 10% of the market, or there is Big Four that has about 70 percent of market share, and there are 4-5 small firms that have other 30% of this market share.
Cheating
     As it was explained in Game Theory model (previous article), there is a high-temptation for collusive oligopolistic firm to make a secret cut in price that may result in increased revenues. So buyers that are getting price cut by one supplier may wait for price-cut for another. Buyers may attempt to create a play between these two firms, so that it may transform into a real war. Even if cheating between collusive oligopolists may be profitable, this act is destructing it over time. However, collusion is more likely to succeed when cheating is easier to observe and punish.
Possible Entry
   Greater revenues may result in attracting new firms in this industry. Since this may create increased market supply and reduced prices, successful collusion of oligopolists requires them to block the entry for new producers.
Recession
   Recessions serves as enemies to collusion, since markets will increase average total costs (ATC), because oligopolists’ demand and marginal revenues (MR) will decrease in response to this recession. Firms will find out that the quantity supplied by them is in excess, so these firms will have to avoid great profit reductions (or losses) after cutting prices and thus they will gain sale at expense of rivals.
Anti-combined law (legal barrier)
   Many countries have anti-combined laws that prohibit this price-fixing collusion, so this means that they have a system of price control.

Measurement of Industry Concentration

      There are several methods used to measure the degree to which oligopolistic industries are concentrated by largest firms. The most often used ways to measure are concentration ratios and the Herfindahl index.

Concentration Ratio
   Concentration Ration shoes the percentage of total output produced and sold by industry’s largest firms. For example, three largest U.S producers of iron, supply almost 100% of all iron resource in this country.
   When the largest three-four firms in an industry control 40% or more of the market, that industry is said to be oligopolistic. Although concentration ratios offer useful ideas about competitiveness and monopoly power of diverse industries, there are three shortcomings.

• Local Markets

   Concentration ratios relate to nations as a whole, where the markets for some goods are highly localized because of expensive transport. For example, the four-firm concentration ratio for tobacco products is just 37% in China, suggesting that this industry is a competitive one. But, when we relate this product to some specific market or town in this country, we may often find that four firms produce about 80% of the total output in that area.

• Inter-industry Competition

   Inter-industry competition is competition between the products of one industry and the products of another industry. An example to this kind of competition may serve primary metals in some industries aluminum and copper, since aluminum competes with copper in many applications. (Electric devices, robots, machineries)

• World Trade

   The data for products produced in one country only may overstate concentration ratio since in most of cases they don’t account for import competition of foreign suppliers. Although some figures show that domestic firms produce over 90% of the total output for some good, they ignore the fact that some large quantities of that good may be imported. Many of the world’s largest corporations are foreign, so many of them are spread in diverse countries.

Herfindahl Index
   The shortcomings of concentration ratio from above apply to many measures of concentration, but one of these can be eliminated: Let’s say in industry “A” one firm produces all market output, but in industry “B” five firms produce 20% of the market. The concentration ratio is 100% in both cases. But industry “A” is pure monopoly, while industry “B” is an oligopoly. Economically, monopoly power is greater in industry “A” is greater than that from industry “B”, this fact isn’t shown by identical 100% concentration ratio.
   Herfindahl index solves this problem. This index is the sum of the squared percentage market shares all firms in the industry have. In equation from:

   Where %S₁ is the percentage share of firm 1, %S₂ is the percentage share of firm 2, and so on for each firm in the industry. By squaring percentages this index give more power to firms that have larger market shares, than to smaller ones. In case that a single firm has 100% then the Herfindahl index gives its highest value- 10000. In our industry “B”, Herfinahl index will be 20²+20²+20²+20²+20² which results in 2000, which is much more less that 10000 showing less market power.(In a purely competitive industry this index will approach to zero). More market power-higher Herfindahl index.

Oligopoly Market System

   Oligopoly is a market system that is dominated by few big suppliers of homogeneous or differentiated products. Because there are few firms, oligopolists have great control over prices, but they should consider reaction of rivals after they change price of goods, output quantity and amount of money spent on advertising.
Producers
   The phrase “few large producers” is one necessary to describe this kind of market system. Some examples of oligopoly can be two or three zinc producers in Sweden, or five or six producers of auto parts in U.K. When you will read in some magazines at economics about Big Three, Big Four or Big Five, you may be sure that there is described an oligopoly.
 Homogeneous or Differentiated Products
   An oligopoly may be either homogeneous or differentiated one, since the firms in this kind of market system produce a standardized or differentiated product. Many industrial goods( aluminum, lead, cement) are standardized products that are supplied in oligopolies. However, other goods (like cigarettes, automobiles, breakfast cereals) are produced in differentiated oligopolies. Last kind of oligopoly engages in non-price competition by heavy advertising.
   Price and mutual interdependence
   Since in oligopolies there are few firms, each one is a price-maker, like monopolists the y may set the price and output level for their goods, so that these firms control the revenue. However, unlike monopolists (since there are no competitors), oligopolists should consider the reaction of rivals to this changes in price, output, product’s characteristics and money spent on advertising. Thus Oligopolists are described by mutual interdependence: a situation in which firm’s profits doesn’t depend completely on its price and sales policy, but also on that of rivals. For example, before increasing the price of its drinks Pepsi should predict the response of other major producers, like Coca-Cola.
   Entry-Barriers
   Similar entry barriers created in pure monopoly are also created in oligopoly. Economies of scale are a factor that serves as barrier to entry in some oligopolistic industries, such as aircraft, car-producing, and cement industries. In this kind of industries three or four firms control the market supply, so that they have enough money to produce economies of scale, but other firms even if they will want to enter this market will have a small market share so that they won’t be able to have enough revenues to produce economies of scale. They would be high-cost producers, so that these firms won’t be able to survive in this industry.
   Ownership and control of raw materials are another explanation why it’s very difficult to enter in oligopolistic market system. Oligopolists also prevent the entry of new competitors by preemptive pricing and advertising strategies.
Mergers
   Some oligopolies have started because of very fast growth of dominant firms in some industries. But other however, produced an oligopoly by merging with other competing firms. Merging or combination of two or more firms may increase their revenues and economies of scale, because of increased market share they got.
   Another explanation of “urge to merge” is the want for a higher monopolistic power, since larger firm has a greater control over market supply and on the price of its product. Also, because of higher economies of scale they get less costs on producing some goods and services than their rivals.
Is merge between Google and Facebook possible and also profitable?