How Do We Fix Rent Seeking?

by Levi Russell

Over at the ProMarket blog, Asher Schechter summarizes some key arguments made at the recent ASSA meetings on rent seeking, antitrust enforcement, and inequality. The post is quite long (for a blog), so I'll just comment on some key paragraphs and leave the rest to the interested reader.

“In all areas of economics, the rules of the game are critical—that is emphasized by the fact that similar economics [sic] exhibit markedly different patterns of distribution, market income, and after tax and transfers income. This is especially so in an innovation economy, because innovation gives rise to rents—both from IPR and monopoly power. Who receives those rents is a matter of policy, and changes in the IPR [Intellectual Property Rights] regime have led to greater rents without having any effects on the pace of innovation,” said Stigltz.

 Stiglitz's complaint about rents from innovation is telling. As I've discussed previously here at FH, if we take a dynamic view of competition, the rents (i.e. profits in excess of all costs) from innovation are merely an inducement to continue innovating. The value of the innovations themselves are still determined by the consumer and the "monopolist" is still incentivized to create what the public wants.

So, taking his last claim at face value, what would explain increasing profits to innovators without concomitant increases in innovation? I don't buy the intellectual property argument. More likely, it's the seemingly unceasing increase in regulation in so many industries. It explains reductions in the pace of innovation because it restricts entrepreneurs from doing what they believe is best for customers. It explains increasing profits because it keeps out new entrants and potentially pushes out smaller competitors.

Both Stiglitz and Deaton agreed that tougher antitrust enforcement is “incredibly important” in reducing inequality (an argument that was explored at length in ProMarket as well), rejecting claims that diminishing the role of government and regulation is the key.

What to do about increasing concentration? Ramp up antitrust enforcement, of course! The problem here is that a move back to the old ways of measuring market power, namely concentration indices, don't accurately capture market power. The work of Israel Kirzner, Harold Demsetz, and William Baumol bear this out. Stiglitz and Deaton seem to want more (or at the very least, not less) regulation, and more antitrust enforcement. The problem is that regulation creates barriers to entry that enhance market power of incumbents!

Campaign finance reform, he said, “would reduce the current selection of Representatives and Senators who are beholden to deep pockets. It’s hard to be elected to Congress or to stay elected without support from well funded interest, and that’s as true in recent years for the Democrats as for Republicans. Congressmen and Congresswomen are the farm team for K-Street.”

Another phrase for "campaign finance reform" is "abridgement of the first amendment." If we're concerned about the power of K Street Lobbyists (and I think we should be), it seems reasonable to address them directly, rather than through potentially damaging the freedom of political speech. If you want to reduce K Street's influence, the most direct way to do so is to reduce the scale and scope of power of the administrative bureaucracy and the legislature.

I'd love to hear readers' thoughts on these selections or on any other topic discussed in the article linked above!

Entry Regulation - Public Interest or Public Choice?

by Levi Russell

Don Boudreaux at his Cafe Hayek Blog points to a great article which comprehensively measures the effects of entry regulation - regulations associated with starting a business - that I thought I'd share.

The article does a great job explaining the three primary theoretical reasons for regulation:

1) the public interest view, which states that regulation is used by governments to correct for the many, many market failures existing in private markets

2) the public choice view, which states that regulation primarily serves politically-well-connected interest groups and that the public at large is inept to curtail these favors because of poor incentives and information problems associated with political decision making

3) another public choice view, which states that regulation benefits politicians because politicians are able to extract payments from private interests in exchange for not passing or exempting said private interests from the regulation

So what do the authors of the paper find? Here's the abstract:

We present new data on the regulation of entry of start-up firms in 85 countries. The data cover the number of procedures, official time, and official cost that a start-up must bear before it can operate legally. The official costs of entry are extremely high in most countries. Countries with heavier regulation of entry have higher corruption and larger unofficial economies, but not better quality of public or private goods. Countries with more democratic and limited governments have lighter regulation of entry. The evidence is inconsistent with the public interest theories of regulation, but supports the public choice view that entry regulation benefits politicians and bureaucrats.

The first 5 pages of the article go into a bit more depth about the three theories listed above and specifically how their analysis leads to the conclusions they draw.

Most Popular Posts of 2016

by Levi Russell

Happy New Year! I hope FH readers have had a great 2016 and I hope 2017 is even better. Our second year was very productive. During 2016 we launched a Facebook page that has helped draw traffic to the site. This year I hope to include more guest bloggers and to increase our page views further while increasing engagement in the comments.

In 2016, we published 90 posts here on the Farmer Hayek Blog. Topics included regulation, big data issues on the farm, monopoly theory and evidence, public choice, and many others. While noting that Google's page view counter is inaccurate, I've listed below the top 15 posts of 2016 by page view count in order from highest to lowest. I hope you enjoy looking back at these posts as much as I have!

Tumbler Competition: The Rise and Fall(?) of the Yeti

Nirvana Fallacy Watch: Stiglitz Edition

Precision Agriculture Implications for Farm Management: Farmland Leasing Example

Fixed Costs, Marginal Cost, and Ronald Coase

Don Boudreaux's Review of Phishing for Phools

Farmers Must Actively Protect Data to Secure Trade Secret Protections

Intentions, Faith, and the Nirvana Fallacy

Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016: Can It Help Protect Your Farm Data?

Richard Langlois on Dynamic Competition

Remembering Ronald Coase

I Can't Put Enough Scare Quotes Around "Free Market"

Behavioral Public Choice: A Literature Review

Legal and Economic Implications of Farm Data

Monopoly Concerns with Baysanto

Relatively Good Regulation - GMO Edition 

Testing Market Failure Theories

by Levi Russell

I recently picked up a copy of Tyler Cowen and Eric Crampton's 2002 edited volume Market Failure or Success: The New Debate (now only in print with the Independent Institute, though it was originally published by Edward Elgar) and have really enjoyed what I've read so far. The book is a collection of essays by prominent IO scholars organized into four sections: a fantastic introduction by the editors, four essays that form the foundation of the "new" market failure theories based on information problems, four theoretical critiques of said theories, and 8 essays providing empirical and experimental evidence of the editors' thesis: that information-based market failure theory is often merely a theoretical possibility not borne out in real life and that economic analysis of knowledge often provides us with the reasons why.

Two pieces by Stiglitz are featured in the first theoretical section: one on information asymmetries and wage and price rigidities and the other on the incompleteness of markets. Akerlof's famous "lemons" paper and Paul David's paper on path dependence are also included. I was happy to see that Demsetz's "Information and Efficiency; Another Viewpoint" was the first essay in the theoretical critique section as it sets the stage for the other chapters in that section. The empirical and experimental section features Liebowitz and Margolis' response to Paul David on path dependence in technology, Eric Bond's direct test of Akerlof's "lemons" model, and an essay I've never ready by Gordon Tullock entitled "Non-Prisoner's Dilemma."

The introduction provides a short summary of the arguments presented in the following 3 sections and includes a great discussion of the editors' views of the core problems with information-based market failures. Here's the conclusion of the intro chapter:

Our world is a highly imperfect one, and these imperfections include the workings of markets. Nonetheless, while being vigilant about what we will learn in the future, we conclude that the 'new theories' of market failure overstate their case and exaggerate the relative imperfections of the market economy. In some cases, the theoretical foundations of the market failure arguments are weak. In other cases, the evidence doe snot support what the abstract models suggest. Rarely is analysis done in a comparative institutional framework. 

The term 'market failure' is prejudicial - we cannot know whether markets fail before we actually examine them, yet most of market failure theory is just theory. Alexander Tabarrok (2002) suggests that 'market challenge theory' might be a better term. Market challenge theory alerts us to areas where market might fail and encourages us to seek out evidence. In testing these theories, we may find market failure or we may find that markets are more robust than we had previously believed. Indeed, the lasting contribution of the new market failure theorists may be in encouraging empirical research that broadens and deepens our understanding of markets.

We believe that the market failure or success debate will become more fruitful as it turns more to Hayekian themes and empirical and experimental methods. Above, we noted that extant models were long on 'information' - which can be encapsulated into unambiguous, articulable bits - and short on the broader category of 'knowledge,' as we find in Hayek [Hayek's 1945 article The Use of Knowledge in Society can be read here for free. A short explanation of the main theme of the article can be found here. - LR]. Yet most of the critical economic problems involve at least as much knowledge as information. Employers, for instance, have knowledge of how to overcome shirking problems, even when they do not have explicit information about how hard their employees are working. Many market failures are avoided to the extent we mobilize dispersed knowledge successfully. 

It is no accident that the new market failure theorists have focused on information to the exclusion of knowledge. Information is easier to model, whereas knowledge is not, and the economics profession has been oriented towards models. Explicitly modeling knowledge may remain impossible for the immediate future, which suggests a greater role for history, case studies, cognitive science, and the methods of experimental economics. 

We think in particular of the experimental revolution in economics as a way of understanding and addressing Hayek's insights on the markets and knowledge; Vernon Smith, arguably the father of modern experimental economics, frequently makes this connection explicit. Experimental economics forces the practitioner to deal with the kinds of knowledge an behavior patterns that individuals possess in the real world, rather than what the theorist writes into an abstract model. The experiment then tells us how the original 'endowments' might translate into real world outcomes. Since we are using real world agents, these endowments can include Hayekian knowledge and not just narrower categories of information. 

Experimental results also tend to suggest Hayekian conclusions. When institutions and 'rules of the game' are set up correctly, decentralized knowledge has enormous power. Prices and incentives are extremely potent. The collective result of a market process contains a wisdom that the theorist could not have replicated with pencil and paper alone.

On Regulatory Cost-Benefit Analysis

by Levi Russell

I recently ran across a fantastic article in Regulation magazine written by George Washington University regulation expert Susan Dudley. The article, entitled "OMB's Reported Benefits of Regulation: Too Good to Be True?" tackles an issue not often raised in policy discussions: What are the assumptions underlying cost-benefit analysis of regulation? Dudley explains in detail the way in which benefits are counted and how the scope of the analysis differs for benefits and costs. A single benefit category, reductions in fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), is responsible for the bulk of benefits calculated by OMB.

Given this focus on fine particulate matter, it would make sense that the science on the harm caused by PM 2.5 would inspire a lot of confidence. On the contrary, Dudley writes:

The OMB identifies six key assumptions that contribute to this uncertainty in PM2.5 benefits estimates. One assumption is that “inhalation of fine particles is causally associated with premature death at concentrations near those experienced by most Americans on a daily basis.” The EPA bases this assumption on epidemiological evidence of an association between particulate matter concentrations and mortality; however, as all students are taught, correlation does not imply causation (cum hoc non propter hoc), and the agency cannot identify a biological mechanism that explains  the  observed  correlation.  Risk  expert  Louis  Anthony  Cox raises questions as to whether the correlation the EPA claims is real. His statistical analysis (published in the journal Risk Analysis) concludes with a greater than 95 percent probability that no association exists and that, instead, the EPA’s results are a product of its choice of models and selected data rather than a real, measured correlation.

Another  key  assumption  on  which  the  EPA’s (and therefore the OMB’s) benefit estimates hinge is  that  “the  impact  function  for  fine  particles  is approximately  linear  within  the  range  of  ambient  concentrations  under  consideration,  which includes concentrations below the National Ambient Air Quality Standard” (NAAQS). Both theory and data suggest that thresholds exist below which further  reductions  in  exposure  to PM 2.5 do  not yield changes in mortality response and that one should expect diminishing returns as exposures are reduced to lower and lower levels. However, the EPA assumes  a  linear  concentration response  impact function that extends to concentration below background levels. The OMB observes, “indeed, a significant portion of the benefits associated with more  recent  rules  are  from  potential  health  benefits in regions that are in attainment with the fine particle standard.”

Based  on  its  assumptions  of  a  causal,  linear, no-threshold relationship between PM 2.5 exposure and premature mortality, the EPA quantifies a number  of  “statistical  lives”  that  will  be  “saved” when concentrations of PM 2.5 decline as a result of regulation. If any of those assumptions are false (in other words, if no association exists, if the relation-ship is not causal, or if the concentration-response relationship is not linear at low doses), the benefits of reducing PM 2.5 would be less than estimated and perhaps even zero.

Further, as the OMB notes, “the value of mortality risk reduction is taken largely from studies of the willingness to accept risk in the labor market[where the relevant population is healthy and has a  long  remaining  life  expectancy]  and  might  not necessarily apply to people in different stages of life or health status.” This caveat is particularly important in the case of PM2.5 because, as the EPA’s 2011 analysis reports, the median age of the beneficiaries of these regulations is around 80 years old, and the average extension in life expectancy attributable to lower PM 2.5 levels is less than six months.

 It's clear that there are some serious, objective problems with the way some benefits of regulation are calculated. Dudley concludes:

The OMB’s role is to serve as a check against agencies’ natural motivation to paint a rosy picture of their proposed actions. While it cannot ensure that agencies consider all the possible consequences of an action in their analyses, it should try to ensure that the boundaries of those analyses are set with some regard to objective science. When a few categories of benefits that have questionable legitimacy puff up benefits by a five-fold margin or more, that does not appear to be the case.

Beyond the objective, scientific questions concerning the benefits of regulation, analysis of the costs are important as well. In my recent piece in Perspective, a magazine published by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, on the costs of environmental regulation of agriculture, I point to the fundamental uncertainty facing regulators. This uncertainty is not accounted for in the cost calculations of the regulations they enforce:

The uncertainty and compliance costs associated with these regulations represent serious concerns for producers. Recent surveys of row crop producers, cattle producers, and feedlot operators indicate that future environmental regulation is a top concern for their businesses over the long term.
...
This is not to say that regulators are ill-intentioned. They face a highly complex and difficult problem: implementing the will of Congress for the betterment of the American people. The knowledge and information required to regulate even one industry is immense. Not only is it costly to obtain the information necessary to pass effective regulations, regulators can’t be sure that unforeseen unintended consequences won’t diminish the effectiveness of their rules or cause more harm than good. Proposed measures to ensure effective regulation that is not overly burdensome, such as sunset provisions that would require regulations to lapse on a periodic basis, have been put forth but have not been implemented widely. Other propositions include less federal and more local and state control over environmental policy and greater use of common law courts to deal with environmental problems. Both of these proposals acknowledge the information problems inherent in the regulation of agriculture.

There are significant political hurdles to overcome if we are to inject more scientific and objective analysis into regulatory cost-benefit calculation. Knowing how that calculation is done is a crucial first step; Susan Dudley's article is a great way to inform the public so we can get the reform ball rolling!

More on Contestability and the Baysanto Merger

by Levi Russell
In a previous post, I discussed monopoly concerns with Bayer's acquisition of Monsanto. The deal was recently approved by Monsanto shareholders but will likely face significant scrutiny from anti-trust regulators.

In the previous post, I went through a paper by several Texas A&M economists that examined the likely consequences of the acquisition for several row crop seed prices. In this post, I'll make some other comments on contestability.

The A&M paper sticks to standard IO theory:

Concentrated markets do not necessarily imply the presence of market power. Key requirements for market contestability are: (a) Potential entrants must not be at a cost disadvantage to existing firms, and (b) entry and exit must be costless.

In contrast to standard IO theory, VRIO analysis suggests costs are always lower for incumbent firms. Managers of incumbent firms have experience with the specific marketing, managerial, and financial aspects of the industry that new entrants simply don't or must obtain at an additional cost.

Does this imply that no industry is "contestable" in an abstract sense? No. As I pointed out previously, prices are falling in many industries, even in those in which entry would entail 1) significant advantages for incumbents and 2) significant sunk costs. It does imply that the conditions for "contestability" are broader than the standard definition. The resource-based view of the firm provides an alternative view of contestability: The advantages for incumbents and potential sunk costs must simply be small enough that they are outweighed by an entrepreneur's expectation of economic profit associated with entering the industry.

So, when we see apparent divergences between price and marginal cost, as I see it there are three possibilities:

1) there are costs we as third-party observers don't see
2) the economic profit is associated with short-term returns to innovation (e.g. monopolistic competition)
3) there is a legal barrier to entry that is extraneous to the market itself.

This dynamic perspective (which I argue is easily teachable to undergrads) is much more powerful in advancing our understanding of real-world market behavior. Yes, the more unrealistic assumptions made in standard theory allow for more elegant mathematical modeling, but if our goal is to understand causal factors associated with firm behavior, the resource-based view of the fiirm, VRIO analysis, and other dynamic theories are more useful.

The Poultry Price Paradox - Why Are Turkeys Cheaper During Thanksgiving?

Guest Post
by David Williamson

Over the holiday, Catherine Rampell wrote a piece for the New York Times that raised an interesting question. Why are turkeys cheaper during Thanksgiving when demand is higher? Rampell offers two possible explanations, but I am not totally convinced by either of them. So, I will spell out my concerns with each of Rampell's explanations below and offer a third explanation of my own. Rampell's comments are in block quotes and mine are not.

Explanation #1 (Rampell) - Turkeys are "Loss Leaders"

The most intuitive and popular explanation for a high-demand price dip is that retailers are selling 'loss leaders.' Stores advertise very low prices — sometimes even lower than they paid their wholesalers — for big-ticket, attention-grabbing products in order to get people in the door, in the hope that they buy lots of other stuff. You might get your turkey for a song, but then you also buy potatoes, cranberries and pies at the same supermarket — all at regular (or higher) markups.

This is certainly the most popular explanation, but I worry that it ignores the consequences of competition. The way your store makes money selling turkeys at a loss is by attracting new customers that would normally buy potatoes, cranberries, and pies from your competitors' stores. But why would your competitors allow you to steal their customers? Wouldn't they lower the price of their turkeys in response? If so, wouldn't this cancel your effort to attract new customers and just leave you losing money on turkeys? Also, as an empirical matter, do stores really charge the same or higher prices for potatoes, cranberries, and pies during Thanksgiving? I can't find any systematic data to answer this question, but Kroger (America's largest traditional grocery store) had sales on all these items before Thanksgiving and not just turkeys.

Explanation #2 (Rampell) - Grocery Stores Are Price Discriminating

[P]lenty of economists...argue that it’s actually demand-side forces — changing consumer preferences — that drive these price drops. Consumers might get more price-sensitive during periods of peak demand and do more comparison-shopping, so stores have to drop their prices if they want to capture sales.

This explanation seems more theoretically consistent to me, but I think it rests on three shaky empirical assumptions. First, a grocery store needs market power to price discriminate. However, even after years of growing concentration, this industry is still pretty competitive (the top four firms account for less than 40% of sales). Second, to preserve its pricing strategy, a price discriminating grocery store needs to prevent others from buying in the cheap market (the Thanksgiving season) and selling in the expensive market (the rest of the year). But how do you stop anyone with a freezer from doing just that? Third, for charging consumers less in November to make sense, it must be that they are more price sensitive during the holidays. But is that true? Rampell gives some good reasons for why it might be true, but I can also see why they might not. Specifically, people tend to be more price sensitive when there are more close substitutes available. I am personally very sensitive to the price of Coke because there are always close substitutes (e.g. Pepsi). But it seems like there are very few substitutes for turkey during Thanksgiving. Would Thanksgiving be the same at your home if you served chicken instead?

Explanation #3 (Me) - The Costs of Stocking Turkey are Lower

My preferred explanation is that because grocery stores are competitive, they must charge prices that reflect the marginal costs of the products they sell. Therefore, if the price of turkeys is higher in July than November, it must be because each turkey is more costly to sell. The tough part is figuring out why. One reason turkeys might be more expensive for grocers to sell in July is that they don't sell very quickly that time of year (i.e. they have low "turnover"). Low turnover means higher costs for grocery stores because every day a product sits unsold on your shelf, you are giving up money you could have earned by stocking something that would sell more quickly. When turkeys start flying off the shelves in November, the cost of stocking each turkeys drops and that is reflected in the price. An advantage of this explanation is that it also implies that we would expect the price of cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie to be lower during Thanksgiving, which I think is the case.

What do you all think? Am I missing something important about Rampell's argument? Am I wrong that higher turnover means lower marginal costs? Are there other reasons why turkeys might cost less to sell and product in November? Your comments are much appreciated. Happy Holidays!