unit 4 Additional reading.pdf
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1、 As More People Worry About Monopolies, an Economist Explains What Antitrust Can and Cant Do Steven Moore for HBR According to a growing chorus of critics, America has a “monopoly problem.” Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has said as much, as has Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warre
2、n. President Trump has called Amazon a “no-tax monopoly”. In response, pundits, politicians, and think tanks are renewing their interest in antitrust policy. But is America really dominated by monopolies? And is antitrust the answer? Carl Shapiro is a professor at the Haas School of Business at the
3、University of California at Berkeley, an expert in antitrust, and served at the Department of Justice during the Obama and Clinton administrations. He also served on the Council of Economic Advisors under President Obama. In a new paper, he reviews the evidence of growing concentration in the U.S. e
4、conomy, discusses whether that constitutes a decline in competition, and outlines the role he sees for antitrust going forward. I spoke to Shapiro by phone and email. What follows is excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity. On the timing of his paper, “Antitrust in a Time of Po
5、pulism”: Shapiro: Certainly, Trumps election is part of it. But its more than that. During the 2016 election, both parties were saying that the system is rigged and the little guy is not getting a fair deal. That feeling was partly directed at government, but it was also directed at business. Quite
6、a few Americans seem to believe that powerful large businesses control the system and that regular people and small businesses are not getting a fair shake. More specifically, quite a few journalists, policy analysts, and politicians have been talking about what they see as the decline of competitio
7、n in America over the past 30 or 40 years. I detail this in my paper. That assertion directs attention to the question of whether antitrust policy has somehow failed us. On increasing industry concentration, and whether that suggests a decline in competition: Were not really interested in concentrat
8、ion for his own sake. We use market concentration as a proxy or a signal about whether a market is competitive. I spend a lot of time in the paper looking at the data and asking whether U.S. markets have in fact become significantly more concentrated over the past 20 or 30 years. There are some sign
9、ificant measurement issues. Much of whats been said about changes in concentration does not have a sound basis when one looks more closely at the data. I see some increase in concentration, but not to levels that indicate the presence of many monopolies or even tight-knit oligopolies. But the bigger
10、 question is what do we make of the increases in concentration that we observe. There are two very different interpretations. One interpretation is that when a market gets more concentrated, that means its less competitive, so we have a problem. That is not a new view; it was a fairly popular view i
11、n the 50s and 60s. And many people seem to be taking that view without even realizing that there is a perfectly coherent alternative view. The alternative view attributes increases in concentration to growing economies of scale, which means that the larger companies tend to be more efficient than th
12、e smaller ones. In that situation, over time the larger companies will tend to edge out their smaller rivals. That is what happens naturally when firms compete and there are substantial scale economies. When you have scale economies and some firms are more efficient than others those firms are going
13、 to get bigger and take over and you could very well see increasing concentration. Plus, its well understood by industrial organization economists that many markets are naturally rather concentrated. So thats the alternative explanation: at least some of the increasing concentration we are seeing re
14、flects the competitive process at work. On the proper role of antitrust, and the principles it should follow: There are well established principles of antirust. Its bipartisan. Its long-standing. The antitrust enforcement agencies, private lawyers, antitrust economics, and the courts all follow thes
15、e principles. Everybody who works in this area has converged on these principles over the past 50 years, and we have even exported these principles around the world. What is striking is that these principles seem to be on the table again. People are questioning these without really, in my view, offe
16、ring a very coherent basis for doing so or a workable alternative. So, what are the principles? First, that the goal of antitrust is to make sure that consumers benefit from the forces of competition. What that means is several things. First, we have to make sure that mergers dont eliminate competit
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