Limit Pricing by Noncooperative Oligopolists

과점산업(寡占産業)에서의 진입제한가격(進入制限價格)

A Milgrom-Roberts style signalling model of limit pricing is developed to analyze the possibility and the scope of limit pricing in general, noncooperative oligopolies. The model contains multiple incumbent firms facing a potential entrant and assumes an information asymmetry between incombents and the potential entrant about the market demand. There are two periods in the model. In period 1, n incumbent firms simultaneously and noncooperatively choose quantities. At the end of period 1, the potential entrant observes the market price and makes an entry decision. In period 2, depending on the entry decision of the entrant, n' or (n+1) firms choose quantities again before the game terminates. Since the choice of incumbent firms in period 1 depends on their information about demand, the market price in period 1 conveys information about the market demand. Thus, there is a systematic link between the market price and the profitability of entry. Using Bayes-Nash equilibrium as the solution concept, we find that there exist some demand conditions under which incumbent firms will limit price. In symmetric equilibria, incumbent firms each produce an output that is greater than the Cournot output and induce a price that is below the Cournot price. In doing so, each incumbent firm refrains from maximizing short-run profit and supplies a public good that is entry deterrence. The reason that entry is deterred by such a reduced price is that it conveys information about the demand of the industry that is unfavorable to the entrant. This establishes the possibility of limit pricing by noncooperative oligopolists in a setting that is fully rational, and also generalizes the result of Milgrom and Roberts to general oligopolies, confirming Bain's intuition. Limit pricing by incumbents explained above can be interpreted as a form of credible collusion in which each firm voluntarily deviates from myopic optimization in order to deter entry using their superior information. This type of implicit collusion differs from Folk-theorem type collusions in many ways and suggests that a collusion can be a credible one even in finite games as long as there is information asymmetry. Another important result is that as the number of incumbent firms approaches infinity, or as the industry approaches a competitive one, the probability that limit pricing occurs converges to zero and the probability of entry converges to that under complete information. This limit result confirms the intuition that as the number of agents sharing the same private information increases, the value of the private information decreases, and the probability that the information gets revealed increases. This limit result also supports the conventional belief that there is no entry problem in a competitive market. Considering the fact that limit pricing is generally believed to occur at an early stage of an industry and the fact that many industries in Korea are oligopolies in their infant stages, the theoretical results of this paper suggest that we should pay attention to the possibility of implicit collusion by incumbent firms aimed at deterring new entry using superior information. The long-term loss to the Korean economy from limit pricing can be very large if the industry in question is a part of the world market and the domestic potential entrant whose entry is deterred could .have developed into a competitor in the world market. In this case, the long-term loss to the Korean economy should include the lost opportunity in the world market in addition to the domestic long-run welfare loss.

이 논문의 기본목표는 Bain 이래 논란의 대상이 되어 온 기존기업들에 의한 진입제한가격(進入制限價格)의 형성이 일반적으로 가능한가, 가능하다면 어떠한 메커니즘을 통해 형성되는 가를 밝히고, 진입제한가격이론(進入制限價格理論)이 한국경제에 갖는 의의를 찾아보는데 있다, 이 논문에서 밝혀질 주요결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 다수의 기존기업(旣存企業)이 각자의 이윤극대화(利潤極大化)를 추구하며 카르텔을 형성하지 않는 때에도 기존기업(旣存企業)과 잠재적(潛在的) 신규기업간(新規企業間)에 정보의 불균형이 존재하는 경우 진입제한가격(進入制限價格)이 채택될 가능성이 있다. 둘째, 이러한 과점기업(寡占企業)들에 의한 진입제한가격형성(進入制限價格形成)은 암묵적 담합의 새로운 형태로 해석할 수 있다. 셋째, 진입제한가격형성(進入制限價格形成)은 각종 회계자료(會計資料)가 공표되지 않을 경우에 가능하다. 넷째, 기존기업(旣存企業)의 수(數)가 증가하여 산업(産業)이 완전경쟁산업(完全競爭産業)에 접근해 감에 따라 진입제한가격(進入制限價格)이 형성될 가능성은 사라지게 된다.