Contestable Markets


Contestable Markets
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Contestability

William Baumol (1980s) – theory that the number and size of not only competitors but potential competitors can affect a firm’s behaviour.

Contestability is measured by the extent to which the gains from market entry for a firm exceed the cost of overcoming barriers to entry, with the risks of failure taken into account (affected by barriers to exit).

In other words, a contestable market exists when a market is said to have low sunk costs and therefore low barriers to entry and exit – this means that new firms can quickly enter an industry to exploit supernormal profits before leaving the industry – ‘hit and run’ profits.

Types of competition:
·         Perfect competition: perfect competition is perfectly competitive.
·         Monopolistic competition: this type of competition has minimal entry barriers although small firms need to build up a customer base and meet certain government regulations – it is highly but not perfectly contestable.
·         Oligopolies: these are much less contestable due to high barriers to entry and exit.
·         Monopolies: these are not very contestable at all, for example in a legal monopoly such as the Post office (to an extent) the market is not contestable. This can also be an issue where a firm has the protection of a patent.

What is a sunk cost?
·         A sunk cost is a cost which cannot be recouped on exiting the industry.
·         The main examples of sunk costs are advertising, research and development etc.
·         In other words, sunk costs are the costs of anything which cannot be sold second hand.

How the threat of new entry influences the behaviour of firms

Firms may alter their behaviour with the threat of new entry, causing them to use price or non-price strategies to deter new entry.

Price strategies:

1.      Predatory Pricing:
·         This is an anti-competitive strategy in which a firm sets price below average variable cost in an attempt to for a rival or rivals out of the market and achieve market dominance.
·         This is an extreme strategy because firms generally shut down when they don’t cover their average variable cost.
·         The consumer might benefit in the short-run, however in the long run the firm would be likely to try to make up for the losses made by significantly increasing price (once competitors had been driven out).
·         In some cases even the threat of predatory pricing will be enough to drive out competition, if credible.
·         Whether entry will be deterred may depend on the potential entrant – a new firm may think that if the dominant firm is willing to risk such losses then it must be worthwhile to dominate the market – it may therefore decide to sacrifice short-term profit in order to enter the market (especially if it is diversifying from other markets and has resources at its disposal).
·         It is illegal under EU law.
·         One example of predatory pricing is with easyJet in 1996:
-          easyJet was a relatively new low-cost budget airline trying to establish itself
-          when they started flying the London-Amsterdam route the incumbent firm (KLM) reacted aggressively, driving its price below easyJet’s
-          easyJet responded by launching legal action against KLM

2.      Limit Pricing:
·         This is less extreme.
·     The limit price is the highest price that an existing firm can set without enabling new firms to enter the market and make a profit.
·         If a firm is making supernormal profits in an industry, this will be attractive to potential entrants.
·         If a new firm joins the market, producing on a relatively small scale (so as just to cover AC) the price will go down.
·    As the new firm is just covering AC it is making normal profits, and the previous firm’s supernormal profits decrease.
·         The firm could have guarded against entry by charging a lower price to begin with – this way the new firm would have driven price down to a lower level, and without the benefits of economies of scale it would make losses and exit the market.
·         If the existing firm has been in the market for some time it will have learned in the process, and will have a lower AC than the new entrant – this means that limit pricing can be used more easily.
·     Therefore, by setting a price below the profit maximising level, the original firm is able to maintain its market position in the longer run.
·      This may happen in an oligopoly as well as a monopoly, as existing firms may group together to limit price.

Non-price strategies:
Advertising and publicity:
-           Component of fixed costs – advertising does not vary much with output.
-          If firms spend heavily on advertising, it increases barriers to entry for new firms as     they must also heavily advertise in order to increase demand for their product.
-    Firms may spend heavily on achieving a well-known brand image and therefore consumer loyalty – they may invest in the design and packaging of their merchandise, e.g. the TV campaign run by Sunny Delight when trying to gain entry into the soft drinks market in the early 00s.
-    Such costs are also sunk costs, therefore they make the market less contestable by raising barriers to exit too.
Research and development:
-          In some markets there is heavy expenditure on research and development.
-     E.g. the pharmaceutical industry, which spends a lot of money researching new drugs.
-       This is another component of fixed costs – it does not vary with the volume of output.
-       New firms know that they will need to invest heavily in research and development if they are going to keep up with the new better drugs constantly coming onto the market.