Moreover, if collusive strategies are implemented, and
oligopolists manage to raise prices significantly above
their competitive level, each oligopolist will be confronted
with a conflict between sticking to the tacitly agreed
behaviour and increasing its individual profits by
'cheating' on its competitors. Therefore, the question of
mutual monitoring and control is a key issue in collusive
oligopolies".
Monopolies and oligopolies, went the contestability
theory, also refrain from restricting output, lest their
market share be snatched by new entrants. In other words,
even monopolists behave as though their market was fully
competitive, their production and pricing decisions and
actions constrained by the "ghosts" of potential and
threatening newcomers.
In a CRIEFF Discussion Paper titled "From Walrasian
Oligopolies to Natural Monopoly - An Evolutionary
Model of Market Structure", the authors argue that:
"Under decreasing returns and some fixed cost, the market
grows to 'full capacity' at Walrasian equilibrium
(oligopolies); on the other hand, if returns are increasing,
the unique long run outcome involves a profit-maximising
monopolist".
While intellectually tempting, contestability theory has
little to do with the rough and tumble world of business.
Contestable markets simply do not exist. Entering a
market is never cheap, nor easy. Huge sunk costs are
required to counter the network effects of more veteran
products as well as the competitors' brand recognition and
ability and inclination to collude to set prices.
Victory is not guaranteed, losses loom constantly,
investors are forever edgy, customers are fickle, bankers
itchy, capital markets gloomy, suppliers beholden to the
competition. Barriers to entry are almost always
formidable and often insurmountable.
In the real world, tacit and implicit understandings
regarding prices and competitive behavior prevail among
competitors within oligopolies. Establishing a reputation
for collusive predatory pricing deters potential entrants.
And a dominant position in one market can be leveraged
into another, connected or derivative, market.
But not everyone agrees. Ellis Hawley believed that
industries should be encouraged to grow because only size
guarantees survival, lower prices, and innovation. Louis
Galambos, a business historian at Johns Hopkins
University, published a 1994 paper titled "The Triumph of
Oligopoly". In it, he strove to explain why firms and
managers - and even consumers - prefer oligopolies to
both monopolies and completely free markets with
numerous entrants.
Oligopolies, as opposed to monopolies, attract less
attention from trustbusters. Quoted in the Wall Street
Journal on March 8, 1999, Galambos wrote:
"Oligopolistic competition proved to be beneficial ...
because it prevented ossification, ensuring that
managements would keep their organizations innovative
and efficient over the long run".
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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