Industry Dynamics with Cartels: The Case of the Container Shipping Industry

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteur principal: Otani, Suguru
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Otani, Suguru
author_facet Otani, Suguru
contents I investigate how explicit cartels, known as ``shipping conferences", in a global container shipping market facilitated the formation of one of the largest globally integrated markets through entry, exit, and shipbuilding investment of shipping firms. Using a novel data, I develop and construct a structural model and find that the cartels shifted shipping prices by 20-50\% and encouraged firms' entry and investment. In the counterfactual, I find that cartels would increase producer surplus while slightly decreasing consumer surplus, then may increase social welfare by encouraging firms' entry and shipbuilding investment. This would validate industry policies controlling prices and quantities in the early stage of the new industry, which may not be always harmful. Investigating hypothetical allocation rules supporting large or small firms, I find that the actual rule based on tonnage shares is the best to maximize social welfare.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_15147
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Industry Dynamics with Cartels: The Case of the Container Shipping Industry
Otani, Suguru
General Economics
Economics
I investigate how explicit cartels, known as ``shipping conferences", in a global container shipping market facilitated the formation of one of the largest globally integrated markets through entry, exit, and shipbuilding investment of shipping firms. Using a novel data, I develop and construct a structural model and find that the cartels shifted shipping prices by 20-50\% and encouraged firms' entry and investment. In the counterfactual, I find that cartels would increase producer surplus while slightly decreasing consumer surplus, then may increase social welfare by encouraging firms' entry and shipbuilding investment. This would validate industry policies controlling prices and quantities in the early stage of the new industry, which may not be always harmful. Investigating hypothetical allocation rules supporting large or small firms, I find that the actual rule based on tonnage shares is the best to maximize social welfare.
title Industry Dynamics with Cartels: The Case of the Container Shipping Industry
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.15147