[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmep/12-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

New and Larger Costs of Monopoly and Tariffs

Author

Listed:
  • James A. Schmitz
Abstract
Fifty-eight years ago, Harberger (1954) estimated that the costs of monopoly, which resulted from misallocation of resources across industries, were trivial. Others showed that the same was true for tariffs. This research soon led to the consensus that monopoly costs are of little significance?a consensus that persists to this day. This paper reports on a new literature that takes a different approach to the costs of monopoly. It examines the costs of monopoly and tariffs within industries. In particular, it examines the histories of industries in which a monopoly is destroyed (or tariffs greatly reduced) and the industry transitions quickly from monopoly to competition. If there are costs of monopoly and high tariffs within industries, it should be possible to see those costs whittled away as the monopoly is destroyed. In contrast to the prevailing consensus, this new research has identified significant costs of monopoly. Monopoly (and high tariffs) is shown to significantly lower productivity within establishments. It also leads to misallocation within industries: Resources are transferred from high- to low-productivity establishments. From these histories, a common theme (or theory) emerges as to why monopoly is costly. When a monopoly is created, ?rents? are created. Conflict emerges among shareholders, managers and employees of the monopoly as they negotiate how to divide these rents. Mechanisms are set up to split the rents. These mechanisms are often means to reduce competition among members of the monopoly. Although the mechanisms divide rents, they also destroy them (by leading to low productivity and misallocation).

Suggested Citation

  • James A. Schmitz, 2012. "New and Larger Costs of Monopoly and Tariffs," Economic Policy Paper 12-5, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmep:12-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://minneapolisfed.org/~/media/files/pubs/eppapers/12-5/epp_12-5_monopoly_tariffs.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chris Edmond & Virgiliu Midrigan & Daniel Yi Xu, 2011. "Competition , Markups, and the Gains from," Department of Economics - Working Papers Series 1183, The University of Melbourne, revised 2014.
    2. Timothy Dunne & Shawn Klimek & James Schmitz, Jr., 2010. "Competition and Productivity: Evidence from the Post WWII U.S. Cement Industry," Working Papers 10-29, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts & Benedikt Herrmann & Henrik Orzen, 2010. "Intergroup Conflict and Intra-group Punishment in an Experimental Contest Game," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 420-447, March.
    4. Boldrin,Michele & Levine,David K., 2010. "Against Intellectual Monopoly," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521127264, September.
    5. Thomas J. Holmes & James A. Schmitz, 1995. "Resistance to new technology and trade between areas," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 19(Win), pages 2-17.
    6. Costas Arkolakis & Arnaud Costinot & Dave Donaldson & Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, 2019. "The Elusive Pro-Competitive Effects of Trade," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(1), pages 46-80.
    7. Holmes, Thomas J. & Hsu, Wen-Tai & Lee, Sanghoon, 2014. "Allocative efficiency, mark-ups, and the welfare gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 195-206.
    8. James A. Schmitz Jr., 2005. "What Determines Productivity? Lessons from the Dramatic Recovery of the U.S. and Canadian Iron Ore Industries Following Their Early 1980s Crisis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(3), pages 582-625, June.
    9. Benjamin Bridgman & Shi Qi & James A. Schmitz, 2009. "The economic performance of cartels: evidence from the New Deal U.S. sugar manufacturing cartel, 1934-74," Staff Report 437, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1992. "Bidding Rings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 579-599, June.
      • McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John., 1990. "Bidding Rings," Working Papers 726, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    11. repec:bla:econom:v:62:y:1995:i:248:p:507-20 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Gajendran Raveendranathan, 2019. "Who Bears the Welfare Costs of Monopoly? The Case of the Credit Card Industry," Working Papers 2019-071, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.

    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. Wyatt J. Brooks & Pau S. Pujolàs, 2014. "Nonlinear Gravity," Department of Economics Working Papers 2014-15, McMaster University.
    2. Feenstra, Robert C., 2018. "Restoring the product variety and pro-competitive gains from trade with heterogeneous firms and bounded productivity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 16-27.
    3. Van Reenen, John, 2011. "Does competition raise productivity through improving management quality?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 306-316, May.
    4. Hsu, Wen-Tai & Lu, Yi & Wu, Guiying Laura, 2020. "Competition, markups, and gains from trade: A quantitative analysis of China between 1995 and 2004," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    5. Holmes, Thomas J. & Hsu, Wen-Tai & Lee, Sanghoon, 2014. "Allocative efficiency, mark-ups, and the welfare gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 195-206.
    6. Dinopoulos, Elias & Unel, Bulent, 2013. "A simple model of quality heterogeneity and international trade," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 68-83.
    7. Jose Asturias & Manuel García-Santana & Roberto Ramos, 2019. "Competition and the Welfare Gains from Transportation Infrastructure: Evidence from the Golden Quadrilateral of India," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(6), pages 1881-1940.
    8. Daniel Ferreira & Thomas Kittsteiner, 2016. "When Does Competition Foster Commitment?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(11), pages 3199-3212, November.
    9. Kondo, Illenin O., 2018. "Trade-induced displacements and local labor market adjustments in the U.S," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 180-202.
    10. Hsu, Wen-Tai & Ma, Lin, 2021. "Urbanization policy and economic development: A quantitative analysis of China's differential hukou reforms," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    11. Costinot, Arnaud & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2014. "Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 197-261, Elsevier.
    12. Carlos Lamarche, 2013. "Industry-wide work rules and productivity: evidence from Argentine union contract data," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-25, December.
    13. Siying Ding & Ahmad Lashkaripour & Volodymyr Lugovskyy, 2024. "A Global Perspective on the Incidence of Monopoly Distortions," CESifo Working Paper Series 11211, CESifo.
    14. Nocco, Antonella & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I.P. & Salto, Matteo, 2019. "Geography, competition, and optimal multilateral trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 145-161.
    15. Sanghamitra Das & Kala Krishna & Sergey Lychagin & Rohini Somanathan, 2013. "Back on the Rails: Competition and Productivity in State-Owned Industry," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 136-162, January.
    16. Norman Gemmell & Richard Kneller & Danny McGowan & Ismael Sanz, 2012. "Corporate Taxation and Productivity Catch-Up: Evidence from 11 European Countries," Discussion Papers 12/06, University of Nottingham, School of Economics.
    17. Allan Collard-Wexler & Jan De Loecker, 2015. "Reallocation and Technology: Evidence from the US Steel Industry," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 131-171, January.
    18. Kristian Behrens & Sergey Kichko & Philip Ushchev & Sergei Kichko, 2018. "Intersectoral Markup Divergence," CESifo Working Paper Series 6965, CESifo.
    19. Matthew Backus, 2020. "Why Is Productivity Correlated With Competition?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(6), pages 2415-2444, November.
    20. Bridgman, Benjamin, 2015. "Competition, work rules and productivity," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 136-149.

    More about this item

    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:fip:fedmep:12-5. 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: Jannelle Ruswick (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.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.