獨占力과 厚生損失

Welfare Loss Due to Monopoly Power in Korean Manufacturing

This paper estimates the magnitude off welfare losses due to monopoly power in Korean manufacturing based on Harberger model. If a market is not perfectly competitive, there exists certain degree of monopoly power. The monopoly power that makes the price to be greater than marginal cast. Thus the monopoly power results in dead-weight welfare loss. As the market becomes more monopolistic, the monopoly power and the resulted welfare losses become larger. In Korea, many of manufacturing markets are known to be strong oligopoly. In addition, many large scale monopolistic firms are believed to have led the rapid economic growth achieved in Korea. Thus it is expected that there exists some degree of monopoly power in Korean manufacturing. The estimated magnitude of welfare losses due to monopoly power was around one percent of GNP in Korea. This estimated value is too large to neglect the monopoly problem in Korea. More importantly, the welfare losses estimated in the five of the twenty nine3-digit manufacturing industries were more than seventy percent of the estimated total manufacturing welfare losses. Thus strong antitrust policies are recommended in these selective industries.