| Summary: | 博士 === 國立中央大學 === 產業經濟研究所 === 94 === Abstract
Imperfect competition is a prevalent and realistic phenomenon in modern market structures that exists in both labor markets and product markets. Most of the industrial economics literature analyzes the behavior of firms in imperfectly competitive product markets, while perfect competition exists in the labor markets. However, labor markets in most economies are far from being perfectly competitive. There is growing trend of union participation rates are much higher, especially in continental Europe. Consequently, trade unions play an important role for the determination of wages and employment. On the other hand, most standard macroeconomic models, however, assume that markets are perfectly competitive. In practice, imperfect competition in product markets can have a significant impact on the level of employment and the effectiveness of macroeconomic policy.
In Chapter 2, we examine the consequences of unionization for the rivalry between duopoly firms in two types of contracts: vertical integration and vertical separation. If a franchise fee is used to extract the retailer’s profit, then it is in the individual interest of each manufacturer to choose vertical separation and charge his retailer a wholesale price in excess of the unit production cost, depending on the specific time structures. These arguments could make integration preferable for the manufacturer if the wage bargaining power of the union is relatively powerful.
In Chapter 3, we set up a framework for in a duopolistic industry characterized by unobserved vertical contracts, and where there are two vertical chains with two upstream manufacturers selling to two downstream retailers, we show that the wage is jointly determined by the union and the firm through bargaining and that the wage bargaining power of the union under different regimes, regardless of whether an upstream merger or a downstream merger takes place, will determine the degree of the welfare damage effect. It is also found that an upstream or a downstream monopolist, regardless of whether it possesses the right to franchise, will exert no impact on the equilibrium outputs and total profit, and will only affect the distribution of profits within the vertical chain.
In Chapter 4, we set up an endogenous growth model in which public capital is a productive input and monopolistic competition characterizes the intermediate goods sector. Based on such a framework, the objectives of this study can be roughly divided into two parts: (1) public capital is regarded as a flow: we find that an increase in the degree of imperfect competition will have different effects on the growth rate according to whether labor and private capital are substitutive or complementary inputs; (2) public capital is regarded as a stock: we show that an increase in the degree of imperfect competition leads to a reduction in capital accumulation and a lower growth rate. In addition, we examine how income taxation may either discourage or encourage the growth rate. We also explore the transitional adjustment in the economic growth rate in response to a pre-announced tax policy and regulation concerning the monopoly power.
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