Chapter 6
Economies of Scale,Imperfect Competition,and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-2
Introduction
Economies of Scale and International Trade,
An Overview
Economies of Scale and Market Structure
The Theory of Imperfect Competition
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Dumping
The Theory of External Economies
External Economies and International Trade
Summary
Chapter Organization
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-3
Introduction
Countries engage in international trade for two basic
reasons:
Countries trade because they differ either in their
resources or in technology.
Countries trade in order to achieve scale economies or
increasing returns in production.
Two models of international trade in which
economies of scale and imperfect competition play a
crucial role:
Monopolistic competition model
Dumping model
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-4
Economies of Scale and
International Trade,An Overview
Models of trade based on comparative advantage (e.g,
Ricardian model) used the assumptions of constant
returns to scale and perfect competition,
Increasing the amount of all inputs used in the
production of any commodity will increase output of that
commodity in the same proportion.
In practice,many industries are characterized by
economies of scale (also referred to as increasing
returns).
Production is most efficient,the larger the scale at which
it takes place,
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-5
Under increasing returns to scale,
Output grows proportionately more than the
increase in all inputs.
Average costs (costs per unit) decline with the size
of the market.
Economies of Scale and
International Trade,An Overview
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-6
Economies of Scale and
International Trade,An Overview
Table 6-1,Relationship of Input to Output for a Hypothetical Industry
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-7
Economies of Scale and
Market Structure
Economies of scale can be either:
External
– The cost per unit depends on the size of the industry
but not necessarily on the size of any one firm.
– An industry will typically consist of many small
firms and be perfectly competitive.
Internal
– The cost per unit depends on the size of an individual
firm but not necessarily on that of the industry.
– The market structure will be imperfectly competitive
with large firms having a cost advantage over small.
Both types of scale economies are important causes of
international trade.
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-8
Imperfect competition
Firms are aware that they can influence the price of
their product.
– They know that they can sell more only by reducing
their price,
Each firm views itself as a price setter,choosing the
price of its product,rather than a price taker.
The simplest imperfectly competitive market structure
is that of a pure monopoly,a market in which a firm
faces no competition.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-9
Monopoly,A Brief Review
Marginal revenue
– The extra revenue the firm gains from selling an
additional unit
– Its curve,MR,always lies below the demand curve,D.
– In order to sell an additional unit of output the firm must lower
the price of all units sold (not just the marginal one),
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-10
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Figure 6-1,Monopolistic Pricing and Production Decisions
D
Cost,C and
Price,P
Quantity,Q
Monopoly profits
AC
PM
QM
MR
MC
AC
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-11
Marginal Revenue and Price
– Marginal revenue is always less than the price.
– The relationship between marginal revenue and price
depends on two things:
– How much output the firm is already selling
– The slope of the demand curve
It tells us how much the monopolist has to cut his price to sell
one more unit of output.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-12
– Assume that the demand curve the firm faces is a straight
line:
Q = A – B x P (6-1)
– Then the MR that the firm faces is given by:
MR = P – Q/B (6-2)
Average and Marginal Costs
– Average Cost (AC) is total cost divided by output.
– Marginal Cost (MC) is the amount it costs the firm to
produce one extra unit.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-13
– When average costs decline in output,marginal cost is
always less than average cost.
– Suppose the costs of a firm,C,take the form:
C = F + c x Q (6-3)
– This is a linear cost function.
– The fixed cost in a linear cost function gives rise to economies
of scale,because the larger the firm’s output,the less is fixed
cost per unit.
– The firm’s average costs is given by:
AC = C/Q = F/Q + c (6-4)
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-14
Figure 6-2,Average Versus Marginal Cost
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Average cost
Marginal cost
1
2
0
3
4
5
6
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Cost per unit
Output
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-15
Monopolistic Competition
Oligopoly
– Internal economies generate an oligopoly market
structure,
– There are several firms,each of which is large enough to affect
prices,but none with an uncontested monopoly.
– Strategic interactions among oligopolists have become
important.
– Each firm decides its own actions,taking into account how that
decision might influence its rival’s actions.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-16
Monopolistic competition
– A special case of oligopoly
– Two key assumptions are made to get around the
problem of interdependence:
– Each firm is assumed to be able to differentiate its product from
its rivals.
– Each firm is assumed to take the prices charged by its rivals as
given.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-17
Are there any monopolistically competitive industries
in the real world?
– Some industries may be reasonable approximations (e.g.,
the automobile industry in Europe)
– The main appeal of the monopolistic competition model
is not its realism,but its simplicity.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-18
Assumptions of the Model
– Imagine an industry consisting of a number of firms
producing differentiated products.
– We expect a firm:
– To sell more the larger the total demand for its industry’s
product and the higher the prices charged by its rivals
– To sell less the greater the number of firms in the industry and
the higher its own price
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-19
where:
–Q is the firm’s sales
–S is the total sales of the industry
–n is the number of firms in the industry
–b is a constant term representing the responsiveness of a
firm’s sales to its price
–P is the price charged by the firm itself
–A particular equation for the demand facing a firm
that has these properties is:
Q = S x [1/n – b x (P – P)] (6-5)
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
–P is the average price charged by its competitors
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-20
Market Equilibrium
– All firms in this industry are symmetric
– The demand function and cost function are identical for all
firms.
– The method for determining the number of firms and
the average price charged involves three steps:
– We derive a relationship between the number of firms and the
average cost of a typical firm.
– We derive a relationship between the number of firms and the
price each firm charges.
– We derive the equilibrium number of firms and the average
price that firms charge.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-21
The number of firms and average cost
– How do the average costs depend on the number of firms
in the industry?
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
– Under symmetry,P = P,equation (6-5) tells us that
Q = S/n but equation (6-4) shows us that the average cost
depends inversely on a firm’s output,
– We conclude that average cost depends on the size of the
market and the number of firms in the industry:
AC = F/Q + c = n x F/S + c (6-6)
–The more firms there are in the industry the higher is the average
cost.
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-22
PP
Cost C,and
Price,P
Number
of firms,n
CC
P3
AC3
n3n1
AC1
n2
AC2
E
Figure 6-3,Equilibrium in a Monopolistically Competitive Market
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
P2,
P1
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-23
The number of firms and the price
– The price the typical firm charges depends on the
number of firms in the industry.
– The more firms,the more competition,and hence the lower the
price.
– In the monopolistic competition model firms are
assumed to take each others’ prices as given.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
– If each firm treats P as given,we can rewrite the
demand curve (6-5) in the form:
Q = (S/n + S x b x P) – S x b x P (6-7)
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-24
– Profit-maximizing firms set marginal revenue equal to
their marginal cost,c.
– This generates a negative relationship between the price
and the number of firms in the market which is the PP
curve:
P = c + 1/(b x n) (6-10)
– The more firms there are in the industry,the lower the price
each firm will charge.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-25
The equilibrium number of firms
– The downward-sloping curve PP shows that the more
firms,the lower the price each firm will charge.
– The more firms,the more competition each firm faces.
– The upward-sloping curve CC tells us that the more
firms there are,the higher the average cost of each firm.
– If the number of firms increases,each firm will sell less,so
firms will not be able to move as far down their average cost
curve.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-26
Limitations of the Monopolistic Competition Model
Two kinds of behavior arise in the general oligopoly
setting that are excluded by assumption from the
monopolistic competition model:
– Collusive behavior:
– Can raise the profits of all firms at the expense of consumers
– May be managed through explicit agreements or through tacit
coordination strategies
– Strategic behavior:
– Is adopted by firms to affect the behavior of competitors in a
desirable way
– Deters potential rivals from entering an industry
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-27
The monopolistic competition model can be used to
show how trade leads to,
A lower average price due to scale economies
The availability of a greater variety of goods due to
product differentiation
Imports and exports within each industry (intra-
industry trade)
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-28
The Effects of Increased Market Size
The number of firms in a monopolistically competitive
industry and the prices they charge are affected by the
size of the market.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-29
Figure 6-4,Effects of a Larger Market
Cost C,and
Price,P
Number
of firms,n
CC1
n1
P1
1
PP
n2
P2
2
CC2
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-30
Gains from an Integrated Market,A Numerical
Example
International trade allows creation of an integrated
market that is larger than each country’s market.
– It thus becomes possible to offer consumers a greater
variety of products and lower prices.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-31
Example,Suppose that automobiles are produced by a
monopolistically competitive industry.
– Assume the following:
– b = 1/30,000
– F = $750,000,000
– c = $5000
– There are two countries (Home and Foreign) that have the
same costs of automobile production,
– Annual sales of automobiles are 900,000 at Home and 1.6
million at Foreign.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-32
Figure 6-5,Equilibrium in the Automobile Market
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-33
Figure 6-5,Continued
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-34
Figure 6-5,Continued
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-35
Table 6-2,Hypothetical Example of Gains from Market Integration
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-36
Economies of Scale and Comparative Advantage
Assumptions:
– There are two countries,Home (the capital-abundant
country) and Foreign.
– There are two industries,manufactures (the capital-
intensive industry) and food,
– Neither country is able to produce the full range of
manufactured products by itself due to economies of
scale.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-37
Figure 6-6,Trade in a World Without Increasing Returns
Home
(capital abundant)
Foreign
(labor abundant)
Manufactures Food
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-38
If manufactures is a monopolistically competitive sector,
world trade consists of two parts:
– Intraindustry trade
– The exchange of manufactures for manufactures
– Interindustry trade
– The exchange of manufactures for food
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-39
Figure 6-7,Trade with Increasing Returns and Monopolistic Competition
Home
(capital abundant)
Foreign
(labor abundant)
Manufactures Food
Interindustry
trade
Intraindustry
trade
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-40
Main differences between interindustry and
intraindustry trade:
– Interindustry trade reflects comparative advantage,
whereas intraindustry trade does not.
– The pattern of intraindustry trade itself is unpredictable,
whereas that of interindustry trade is determined by
underlying differences between countries.
– The relative importance of intraindustry and
interindustry trade depends on how similar countries are.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-41
The Significance of Intraindustry Trade
About one-fourth of world trade consists of intra-
industry trade.
Intra-industry trade plays a particularly large role in
the trade in manufactured goods among advanced
industrial nations,which accounts for most of world
trade.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-42
Table 6-3,Indexes of Intraindustry Trade for U.S,Industries,1993
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-43
Why Intraindustry Trade Matters
Intraindustry trade allows countries to benefit from
larger markets.
– The case study of the North American Auto Pact of
1964 indicates that the gains from creating an integrated
industry in two countries can be substantial.
Gains from intraindustry trade will be large when
economies of scale are strong and products are highly
differentiated.
– For example,sophisticated manufactured goods.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-44
The Economics of Dumping
Price discrimination
– The practice of charging different customers different
prices
Dumping
– The most common form of price discrimination in
international trade
– A pricing practice in which a firm charges a lower price
for an exported good than it does for the same good sold
domestically
Dumping
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-45
– It is a controversial issue in trade policy and is widely
regarded as an unfair practice in international trade.
– Example,As of April 2002,the United States had anti-dumping
duties on 265 items from 40 different countries,
Dumping can occur only if two conditions are met:
– Imperfectly competitive industry
– Segmented markets
Given these conditions,a monopolistic firm may find
that it is profitable to engage in dumping.
Dumping
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-46
Figure 6-8,Dumping
Dumping
ExportsDomestic sales
Cost,C and
Price,P
Quantities produced
and demanded,Q
MC
DFOR = MRFOR
MRDOM
DDOM
2P
FOR
PDOM
QDOM QMONOPOLY
Total output
1
3
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-47
Reciprocal Dumping
A situation in which dumping leads to two-way trade
in the same product
It increases the volume of trade in goods that are not
quite identical.
Its net welfare effect is ambiguous:
– It wastes resources in transportation.
– It creates some competition.
Dumping
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-48
The Theory of External Economies
Economies of scale that occur at the level of the
industry instead of the firm are called external
economies.
There are three main reasons why a cluster of firms
may be more efficient than an individual firm in
isolation:
Specialized suppliers
Labor market pooling
Knowledge spillovers
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-49
Specialized Suppliers
In many industries,the production of goods and
services and the development of new products requires
the use of specialized equipment or support services.
An individual company does not provide a large
enough market for these services to keep the suppliers
in business.
– A localized industrial cluster can solve this problem by
bringing together many firms that provide a large
enough market to support specialized suppliers.
– This phenomenon has been extensively documented in the
semiconductor industry located in Silicon Valley.
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-50
Labor Market Pooling
A cluster of firms can create a pooled market for
workers with highly specialized skills.
It is an advantage for:
– Producers
– They are less likely to suffer from labor shortages.
– Workers
– They are less likely to become unemployed.
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-51
Knowledge Spillovers
Knowledge is one of the important input factors in
highly innovative industries.
The specialized knowledge that is crucial to success in
innovative industries comes from:
– Research and development efforts
– Reverse engineering
– Informal exchange of information and ideas
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-52
External Economies and Increasing Returns
External economies can give rise to increasing returns
to scale at the level of the national industry.
Forward-falling supply curve
– The larger the industry’s output,the lower the price at
which firms are willing to sell their output.
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-53
External Economies and the Patter of Trade
A country that has large production in some industry
will tend to have low costs of producing that good.
Countries that start out as large producers in certain
industries tend to remain large producers even if some
other country could potentially produce the goods
more cheaply.
– Figure 6-9 illustrates a case where a pattern of
specialization established by historical accident is
persistent.
External Economies and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-54
Figure 6-9,External Economies and Specialization
External Economies and
International Trade
ACSWISS
Q1
P1
Price,cost
(per watch)
Quantity of watches
produced and demanded
ACTHAI
2
1
C0
D
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-55
Trade and Welfare with External Economies
Trade based on external economies has more
ambiguous effects on national welfare than either trade
based on comparative advantage or trade based on
economies of scale at the level of the firm.
– An example of how a country can actually be worse off
with trade than without is shown in Figure 6-10.
External Economies and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-56
Figure 6-10,External Economies and Losses from Trade
External Economies and
International Trade
ACSWISSP1
Price,cost
(per watch)
Quantity of watches
produced and demanded
ACTHAI
2
1
C0
DTHAI DWORLD
P2
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-57
Dynamic Increasing Returns
Learning curve
– It relates unit cost to cumulative output.
– It is downward sloping because of the effect of the
experience gained though production on costs.
Dynamic increasing returns
– A case when costs fall with cumulative production over
time,rather than with the current rate of production.
Dynamic scale economies justify protectionism.
– Temporary protection of industries enables them to gain
experience (infant industry argument).
External Economies and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-58
Figure 6-11,The Learning Curve
External Economies and
International Trade
L
Unit cost
Cumulative
output
L*
C*0
C1
QL
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-59
Summary
Trade can result from increasing returns or economies
of scale,that is,from a tendency of unit costs to be
lower at larger levels of output.
Economies of scale can be internal or external.
The presence of scale economies leads to a breakdown
of perfect competition,
Trade in the presence of economies of scale must be
analyzed using models of imperfect competition.
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-60
Summary
In monopolistic competition,an industry contains a
number of firms producing differentiated products.
Intraindustry trade benefits consumers through
greater product variety and lower prices.
In general,trade may be divided into two kinds:
Two-way trade in differentiated products within an
industry (intraindustry trade).
Trade in which the products of one industry are
exchanged for products of another (interindustry trade).
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-61
Summary
Dumping occurs when a firm charges a lower price
abroad than it charges domestically.
Dumping can occur only if two conditions are met:
The industry must be imperfectly competitive.
Markets must be geographically segmented.
External economies give an important role to history
and accident in determining the pattern of
international trade.
When external economies are important,countries
can conceivably lose from trade.
Economies of Scale,Imperfect Competition,and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-2
Introduction
Economies of Scale and International Trade,
An Overview
Economies of Scale and Market Structure
The Theory of Imperfect Competition
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Dumping
The Theory of External Economies
External Economies and International Trade
Summary
Chapter Organization
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-3
Introduction
Countries engage in international trade for two basic
reasons:
Countries trade because they differ either in their
resources or in technology.
Countries trade in order to achieve scale economies or
increasing returns in production.
Two models of international trade in which
economies of scale and imperfect competition play a
crucial role:
Monopolistic competition model
Dumping model
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-4
Economies of Scale and
International Trade,An Overview
Models of trade based on comparative advantage (e.g,
Ricardian model) used the assumptions of constant
returns to scale and perfect competition,
Increasing the amount of all inputs used in the
production of any commodity will increase output of that
commodity in the same proportion.
In practice,many industries are characterized by
economies of scale (also referred to as increasing
returns).
Production is most efficient,the larger the scale at which
it takes place,
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-5
Under increasing returns to scale,
Output grows proportionately more than the
increase in all inputs.
Average costs (costs per unit) decline with the size
of the market.
Economies of Scale and
International Trade,An Overview
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-6
Economies of Scale and
International Trade,An Overview
Table 6-1,Relationship of Input to Output for a Hypothetical Industry
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-7
Economies of Scale and
Market Structure
Economies of scale can be either:
External
– The cost per unit depends on the size of the industry
but not necessarily on the size of any one firm.
– An industry will typically consist of many small
firms and be perfectly competitive.
Internal
– The cost per unit depends on the size of an individual
firm but not necessarily on that of the industry.
– The market structure will be imperfectly competitive
with large firms having a cost advantage over small.
Both types of scale economies are important causes of
international trade.
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-8
Imperfect competition
Firms are aware that they can influence the price of
their product.
– They know that they can sell more only by reducing
their price,
Each firm views itself as a price setter,choosing the
price of its product,rather than a price taker.
The simplest imperfectly competitive market structure
is that of a pure monopoly,a market in which a firm
faces no competition.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-9
Monopoly,A Brief Review
Marginal revenue
– The extra revenue the firm gains from selling an
additional unit
– Its curve,MR,always lies below the demand curve,D.
– In order to sell an additional unit of output the firm must lower
the price of all units sold (not just the marginal one),
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-10
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Figure 6-1,Monopolistic Pricing and Production Decisions
D
Cost,C and
Price,P
Quantity,Q
Monopoly profits
AC
PM
QM
MR
MC
AC
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-11
Marginal Revenue and Price
– Marginal revenue is always less than the price.
– The relationship between marginal revenue and price
depends on two things:
– How much output the firm is already selling
– The slope of the demand curve
It tells us how much the monopolist has to cut his price to sell
one more unit of output.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-12
– Assume that the demand curve the firm faces is a straight
line:
Q = A – B x P (6-1)
– Then the MR that the firm faces is given by:
MR = P – Q/B (6-2)
Average and Marginal Costs
– Average Cost (AC) is total cost divided by output.
– Marginal Cost (MC) is the amount it costs the firm to
produce one extra unit.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-13
– When average costs decline in output,marginal cost is
always less than average cost.
– Suppose the costs of a firm,C,take the form:
C = F + c x Q (6-3)
– This is a linear cost function.
– The fixed cost in a linear cost function gives rise to economies
of scale,because the larger the firm’s output,the less is fixed
cost per unit.
– The firm’s average costs is given by:
AC = C/Q = F/Q + c (6-4)
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-14
Figure 6-2,Average Versus Marginal Cost
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Average cost
Marginal cost
1
2
0
3
4
5
6
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Cost per unit
Output
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-15
Monopolistic Competition
Oligopoly
– Internal economies generate an oligopoly market
structure,
– There are several firms,each of which is large enough to affect
prices,but none with an uncontested monopoly.
– Strategic interactions among oligopolists have become
important.
– Each firm decides its own actions,taking into account how that
decision might influence its rival’s actions.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-16
Monopolistic competition
– A special case of oligopoly
– Two key assumptions are made to get around the
problem of interdependence:
– Each firm is assumed to be able to differentiate its product from
its rivals.
– Each firm is assumed to take the prices charged by its rivals as
given.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-17
Are there any monopolistically competitive industries
in the real world?
– Some industries may be reasonable approximations (e.g.,
the automobile industry in Europe)
– The main appeal of the monopolistic competition model
is not its realism,but its simplicity.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-18
Assumptions of the Model
– Imagine an industry consisting of a number of firms
producing differentiated products.
– We expect a firm:
– To sell more the larger the total demand for its industry’s
product and the higher the prices charged by its rivals
– To sell less the greater the number of firms in the industry and
the higher its own price
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-19
where:
–Q is the firm’s sales
–S is the total sales of the industry
–n is the number of firms in the industry
–b is a constant term representing the responsiveness of a
firm’s sales to its price
–P is the price charged by the firm itself
–A particular equation for the demand facing a firm
that has these properties is:
Q = S x [1/n – b x (P – P)] (6-5)
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
–P is the average price charged by its competitors
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-20
Market Equilibrium
– All firms in this industry are symmetric
– The demand function and cost function are identical for all
firms.
– The method for determining the number of firms and
the average price charged involves three steps:
– We derive a relationship between the number of firms and the
average cost of a typical firm.
– We derive a relationship between the number of firms and the
price each firm charges.
– We derive the equilibrium number of firms and the average
price that firms charge.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-21
The number of firms and average cost
– How do the average costs depend on the number of firms
in the industry?
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
– Under symmetry,P = P,equation (6-5) tells us that
Q = S/n but equation (6-4) shows us that the average cost
depends inversely on a firm’s output,
– We conclude that average cost depends on the size of the
market and the number of firms in the industry:
AC = F/Q + c = n x F/S + c (6-6)
–The more firms there are in the industry the higher is the average
cost.
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-22
PP
Cost C,and
Price,P
Number
of firms,n
CC
P3
AC3
n3n1
AC1
n2
AC2
E
Figure 6-3,Equilibrium in a Monopolistically Competitive Market
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
P2,
P1
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-23
The number of firms and the price
– The price the typical firm charges depends on the
number of firms in the industry.
– The more firms,the more competition,and hence the lower the
price.
– In the monopolistic competition model firms are
assumed to take each others’ prices as given.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
– If each firm treats P as given,we can rewrite the
demand curve (6-5) in the form:
Q = (S/n + S x b x P) – S x b x P (6-7)
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-24
– Profit-maximizing firms set marginal revenue equal to
their marginal cost,c.
– This generates a negative relationship between the price
and the number of firms in the market which is the PP
curve:
P = c + 1/(b x n) (6-10)
– The more firms there are in the industry,the lower the price
each firm will charge.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-25
The equilibrium number of firms
– The downward-sloping curve PP shows that the more
firms,the lower the price each firm will charge.
– The more firms,the more competition each firm faces.
– The upward-sloping curve CC tells us that the more
firms there are,the higher the average cost of each firm.
– If the number of firms increases,each firm will sell less,so
firms will not be able to move as far down their average cost
curve.
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-26
Limitations of the Monopolistic Competition Model
Two kinds of behavior arise in the general oligopoly
setting that are excluded by assumption from the
monopolistic competition model:
– Collusive behavior:
– Can raise the profits of all firms at the expense of consumers
– May be managed through explicit agreements or through tacit
coordination strategies
– Strategic behavior:
– Is adopted by firms to affect the behavior of competitors in a
desirable way
– Deters potential rivals from entering an industry
The Theory of
Imperfect Competition
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-27
The monopolistic competition model can be used to
show how trade leads to,
A lower average price due to scale economies
The availability of a greater variety of goods due to
product differentiation
Imports and exports within each industry (intra-
industry trade)
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-28
The Effects of Increased Market Size
The number of firms in a monopolistically competitive
industry and the prices they charge are affected by the
size of the market.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-29
Figure 6-4,Effects of a Larger Market
Cost C,and
Price,P
Number
of firms,n
CC1
n1
P1
1
PP
n2
P2
2
CC2
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-30
Gains from an Integrated Market,A Numerical
Example
International trade allows creation of an integrated
market that is larger than each country’s market.
– It thus becomes possible to offer consumers a greater
variety of products and lower prices.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-31
Example,Suppose that automobiles are produced by a
monopolistically competitive industry.
– Assume the following:
– b = 1/30,000
– F = $750,000,000
– c = $5000
– There are two countries (Home and Foreign) that have the
same costs of automobile production,
– Annual sales of automobiles are 900,000 at Home and 1.6
million at Foreign.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-32
Figure 6-5,Equilibrium in the Automobile Market
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-33
Figure 6-5,Continued
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-34
Figure 6-5,Continued
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-35
Table 6-2,Hypothetical Example of Gains from Market Integration
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-36
Economies of Scale and Comparative Advantage
Assumptions:
– There are two countries,Home (the capital-abundant
country) and Foreign.
– There are two industries,manufactures (the capital-
intensive industry) and food,
– Neither country is able to produce the full range of
manufactured products by itself due to economies of
scale.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-37
Figure 6-6,Trade in a World Without Increasing Returns
Home
(capital abundant)
Foreign
(labor abundant)
Manufactures Food
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-38
If manufactures is a monopolistically competitive sector,
world trade consists of two parts:
– Intraindustry trade
– The exchange of manufactures for manufactures
– Interindustry trade
– The exchange of manufactures for food
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-39
Figure 6-7,Trade with Increasing Returns and Monopolistic Competition
Home
(capital abundant)
Foreign
(labor abundant)
Manufactures Food
Interindustry
trade
Intraindustry
trade
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-40
Main differences between interindustry and
intraindustry trade:
– Interindustry trade reflects comparative advantage,
whereas intraindustry trade does not.
– The pattern of intraindustry trade itself is unpredictable,
whereas that of interindustry trade is determined by
underlying differences between countries.
– The relative importance of intraindustry and
interindustry trade depends on how similar countries are.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-41
The Significance of Intraindustry Trade
About one-fourth of world trade consists of intra-
industry trade.
Intra-industry trade plays a particularly large role in
the trade in manufactured goods among advanced
industrial nations,which accounts for most of world
trade.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-42
Table 6-3,Indexes of Intraindustry Trade for U.S,Industries,1993
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-43
Why Intraindustry Trade Matters
Intraindustry trade allows countries to benefit from
larger markets.
– The case study of the North American Auto Pact of
1964 indicates that the gains from creating an integrated
industry in two countries can be substantial.
Gains from intraindustry trade will be large when
economies of scale are strong and products are highly
differentiated.
– For example,sophisticated manufactured goods.
Monopolistic Competition and Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-44
The Economics of Dumping
Price discrimination
– The practice of charging different customers different
prices
Dumping
– The most common form of price discrimination in
international trade
– A pricing practice in which a firm charges a lower price
for an exported good than it does for the same good sold
domestically
Dumping
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-45
– It is a controversial issue in trade policy and is widely
regarded as an unfair practice in international trade.
– Example,As of April 2002,the United States had anti-dumping
duties on 265 items from 40 different countries,
Dumping can occur only if two conditions are met:
– Imperfectly competitive industry
– Segmented markets
Given these conditions,a monopolistic firm may find
that it is profitable to engage in dumping.
Dumping
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-46
Figure 6-8,Dumping
Dumping
ExportsDomestic sales
Cost,C and
Price,P
Quantities produced
and demanded,Q
MC
DFOR = MRFOR
MRDOM
DDOM
2P
FOR
PDOM
QDOM QMONOPOLY
Total output
1
3
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-47
Reciprocal Dumping
A situation in which dumping leads to two-way trade
in the same product
It increases the volume of trade in goods that are not
quite identical.
Its net welfare effect is ambiguous:
– It wastes resources in transportation.
– It creates some competition.
Dumping
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-48
The Theory of External Economies
Economies of scale that occur at the level of the
industry instead of the firm are called external
economies.
There are three main reasons why a cluster of firms
may be more efficient than an individual firm in
isolation:
Specialized suppliers
Labor market pooling
Knowledge spillovers
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-49
Specialized Suppliers
In many industries,the production of goods and
services and the development of new products requires
the use of specialized equipment or support services.
An individual company does not provide a large
enough market for these services to keep the suppliers
in business.
– A localized industrial cluster can solve this problem by
bringing together many firms that provide a large
enough market to support specialized suppliers.
– This phenomenon has been extensively documented in the
semiconductor industry located in Silicon Valley.
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-50
Labor Market Pooling
A cluster of firms can create a pooled market for
workers with highly specialized skills.
It is an advantage for:
– Producers
– They are less likely to suffer from labor shortages.
– Workers
– They are less likely to become unemployed.
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-51
Knowledge Spillovers
Knowledge is one of the important input factors in
highly innovative industries.
The specialized knowledge that is crucial to success in
innovative industries comes from:
– Research and development efforts
– Reverse engineering
– Informal exchange of information and ideas
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-52
External Economies and Increasing Returns
External economies can give rise to increasing returns
to scale at the level of the national industry.
Forward-falling supply curve
– The larger the industry’s output,the lower the price at
which firms are willing to sell their output.
The Theory of External Economies
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-53
External Economies and the Patter of Trade
A country that has large production in some industry
will tend to have low costs of producing that good.
Countries that start out as large producers in certain
industries tend to remain large producers even if some
other country could potentially produce the goods
more cheaply.
– Figure 6-9 illustrates a case where a pattern of
specialization established by historical accident is
persistent.
External Economies and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-54
Figure 6-9,External Economies and Specialization
External Economies and
International Trade
ACSWISS
Q1
P1
Price,cost
(per watch)
Quantity of watches
produced and demanded
ACTHAI
2
1
C0
D
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-55
Trade and Welfare with External Economies
Trade based on external economies has more
ambiguous effects on national welfare than either trade
based on comparative advantage or trade based on
economies of scale at the level of the firm.
– An example of how a country can actually be worse off
with trade than without is shown in Figure 6-10.
External Economies and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-56
Figure 6-10,External Economies and Losses from Trade
External Economies and
International Trade
ACSWISSP1
Price,cost
(per watch)
Quantity of watches
produced and demanded
ACTHAI
2
1
C0
DTHAI DWORLD
P2
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-57
Dynamic Increasing Returns
Learning curve
– It relates unit cost to cumulative output.
– It is downward sloping because of the effect of the
experience gained though production on costs.
Dynamic increasing returns
– A case when costs fall with cumulative production over
time,rather than with the current rate of production.
Dynamic scale economies justify protectionism.
– Temporary protection of industries enables them to gain
experience (infant industry argument).
External Economies and
International Trade
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-58
Figure 6-11,The Learning Curve
External Economies and
International Trade
L
Unit cost
Cumulative
output
L*
C*0
C1
QL
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-59
Summary
Trade can result from increasing returns or economies
of scale,that is,from a tendency of unit costs to be
lower at larger levels of output.
Economies of scale can be internal or external.
The presence of scale economies leads to a breakdown
of perfect competition,
Trade in the presence of economies of scale must be
analyzed using models of imperfect competition.
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-60
Summary
In monopolistic competition,an industry contains a
number of firms producing differentiated products.
Intraindustry trade benefits consumers through
greater product variety and lower prices.
In general,trade may be divided into two kinds:
Two-way trade in differentiated products within an
industry (intraindustry trade).
Trade in which the products of one industry are
exchanged for products of another (interindustry trade).
Copyright? 2003 Pearson Education,Inc,Slide 6-61
Summary
Dumping occurs when a firm charges a lower price
abroad than it charges domestically.
Dumping can occur only if two conditions are met:
The industry must be imperfectly competitive.
Markets must be geographically segmented.
External economies give an important role to history
and accident in determining the pattern of
international trade.
When external economies are important,countries
can conceivably lose from trade.
