جستجوی مقالات مرتبط با کلیدواژه « انحصار » در نشریات گروه « اقتصاد »

Rare earth elements (REEs) play a crucial role in modern technology, making them essential components of various high-tech products, including electronics, electric vehicles, and military applications. While the quantity of REEs in each device might be small, their unique properties are irreplaceable, and they are vital for the proper functioning of these technologies. The growing use of REEs in advanced applications, combined with the establishment of international trade agreements in this sector, has led to increasing global competition in the rare earth elements market. China has emerged as a leader in the REE industry, a position it has held since the mid-1980s when it began to gradually dominate the world market. As demand for these elements continues to surge, the limited availability of extractable reserves has become a concern. Changes in consumer preferences worldwide, particularly the shift towards high-tech, environmentally-friendly products, have driven this growing demand. The increase in demand has had a profound impact on countries that control the production and market for rare earth elements, as they gain significant influence in the international political and economic arena.The central question explored in this research is the geopolitical consequences of China's near-monopoly in the international rare earth elements market. Given the indispensability of these elements in various industries, including electronics, medical technologies, telecommunications, and defense, their control has far-reaching implications. A country that manages to monopolize the rare earth elements market can wield substantial influence over global politics and the international political economy. This paper aims to investigate the geopolitical outcomes resulting from China's dominance in the international rare earth elements market.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:

The concept of the geopolitics of natural resources is employed in this research to elucidate China's hegemony and its exclusive position in the international market for rare earth elements. Geopolitics involves examining how a country's unique geographical attributes impact its power dynamics and influence on the global stage. Among these geographical elements, natural and mineral resources are of paramount significance. Governments strive to manipulate and control the supply and demand chains within strategic markets to shape the structure of these markets, including those related to strategic resources, in alignment with their political and economic objectives.

The paper will utilize a descriptive-analytic methodology to address the research question and expound on the influence of rare earth elements on China's political, economic, and military power in global politics. This methodology involves the use of both current and historical data to discern patterns and relationships between the variables associated with the research question or hypotheses. It is a method employed to provide a comprehensive and analytical examination of the subject matter.

The research findings indicate that China's relative monopoly and comparative advantage in the production and supply of rare earth resources have evolved into a geopolitical asset, with implications for its economic, political, and military power in relation to major rivals like the United States. In essence, China's geopolitical control of rare earth elements has translated into advantages across economic, political, and military dimensions vis-a-vis its formidable competitors. Despite efforts by other governments to counter China's monopoly, these endeavors have not yielded substantial success thus far. Given China's long-term strategic plans, it is anticipated that Beijing will likely maintain its monopoly on these resources at least until the year 2050.

 CONCLUSIONS & SUGGESTIONS:

To summarize, the key findings of this research on the political and geopolitical consequences of China's relative monopoly on rare earth elements include:Price Determination: China's control over rare earth elements allows it to influence the prices of these elements, giving it a strategic advantage in the global market.Dependence and Vulnerability: Other countries, particularly the United States, become dependent on China for these critical resources, making them vulnerable to China's policies and potentially subject to supply disruptions.Bargaining Power of Chinese Companies: Chinese companies gain significant bargaining power in industries dependent on rare earth elements, enhancing China's economic influence.Impact on Employment: China's control affects employment rates in Western countries and elsewhere as industries relying on rare earth elements may face challenges due to supply issues.These developments collectively contribute to an increase in China's power position compared to competitors like the United States, Japan, and the European Union. Given Iran's substantial reserves of rare earth elements, there is potential for these resources to serve as a diplomatic tool in foreign policy, bolstering Tehran's bargaining power in the international economic arena and potentially influencing discussions related to U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The main purpose of this study was to measure markup and market power in Iran's Manufacturing sector based on Structural approach and   Stochastic Frontier method.  To meet these ends, while using the data of 130 four-digit industries for the period 1996-2015 and MLE method, the translog cost function were estimated. The resuls indicated that there were non-competitive conditions and oligopoly structure in Iran’s industrial market. Moreover, the results of mark-up estimation showed that P> MC in manufacturing industries and the mark up values in 14% and  86%   of industries were low and high, respectively . Overall, the research findings indicated that the dominant aspect in the Iranian industrial market was a monopoly structure and a high percentage of the markets were dominated by a limited number of market participants.

The main purposes of this study are to investigate the social costs of monopoly and to determine the factors affecting them. To measure social costs, three methods of Harberger, Posner and Calling Müller are used, and for this purpose, data from 130 ISIC four-digit code industries during the years 2004 to 2017 were used.To analyze the model, panel data, Generalized Method of moments and Eviews 10 were used. Although in the previous studies, social costs of monopoly in Iran  have been measured,  in this study, the factors affecting them are also evaluated. The research findings show  that the social costs of monopoly in the Posner and Kaling-Muller methods are much higher than in  the Harberger method, which causes disturbance in the optimal allocation of resources and reduces the welfare of society.  Also, the results of the study of factors affecting the social costs of monopoly show that in all three approaches, all variables with a level of probability of 5% are significant and the signs of the variables are in accordance with theoretical expectations. As the variables of concentration index, advertising intensity and research and development intensity are the most important variables affecting social costs and increase them.

The purpose of this article is to achieve the compatibility equilibrium of components. For this purpose, the components compatibility was investigated in the production equipment producers. In this research, a game has been designed in three stages with considering the available alternatives for equipment producers and service providers, in which the firms decide about compatibility before price competition in selling stages and providing services. Then, by means of static games solution with imperfect information, the game equilibrium has been exploited. The modeling results showed that the component incompatibility is the game equilibrium and the firms with monopolization incentives in providing the after sale services, produce own provided outputs under an incompatible situation. Based on results, is suggested the production equipment byers, if possible before purchase, evaluate the rate of breakdown of production equipment, and also, concurrent with purchasing the system, buy the spare parts.

In this paper, we explore the level of monopoly in petrochemical products of Iran and the fluctuations of price using the trading data of these products in Iran Mercantile Exchange (IME). Considering the level of monopoly in this market, we are looking for a solution that lowers the gap between price and quantity of current market with those of perfect competition market. Our solution is termed “Guarantee” which is a kind of security that is issued in a quantity that equates supply to market demand in the next period. This creates a two-stage game in which we satisfy the expectations for the demand of second stage in the first stage. We develop a model and show that in this
solution, the equilibrium will have lower price and higher quantity in which only the shocks of the second stage are affecting equilibrium price and quantity. Thus, in a situation without an unexpected shock, the price and quantity of market will be equal to those of perfect competition equilibrium. Moreover, we examine the underlying prediction of this new tool by analyzing the performance of an existing security called “Salaf”. These two have the nature of future trading in common and our empirical test show that introducing “Salaf” lowers prices, as predicted by theory.

Competition has not been an easy task in the field of insurance. Despite the fact that in the recent decades there has been some regulatory changes, and regulators’ approach tends toward more competition and prudential regulation, the regulatory approach to insurance markets from around the world has led to engendering barriers for competition. In this paper, we shall try to examine various elements and factors which could improve or reduce competition in the insurance market; accordingly, we attempt to show that the insurance market is not excluded from competition and antitrust laws. Furthermore, to improve the efficiency and quality of services in the market, it should be directed to a more competitive insurance market through cooperation and integration at various levels and to a certain extent, reducing barriers to entry, reforming discriminatory regulations, reducing government intervention, increasing the role of the Competition Council and paving the way for the entry of foreign companies.

The main purposes of this article are the evaluation of competition and comparison of market power in rubber and plastics industries with two non-structural approaches. To meet this ends Bresnehan-Lau (1982) and Panzar-Ross (1987) models were used. Data in 4-digit industries for rubber and plastics sub-sectors over the period of 1995-2011 collected from Iran’s statistical center. Equations used in this study consist of supply-demand and reduced form revenue functions estimated with two stage least squares fixed effect (FE2SLS) and least square dummy variables (LSDV) methods respectively. Results indicated that the extent of conjectural variation coefficient was about θ=0.82 because of the fact that firms cooperate with each other, therefore there was imperfect competition structure in this sector. On the other hand, the sum of elasticity’s reduced form revenue with respect to input price was about H=0.81, so market structure was featured as a monopolistic competition. In addition, Comparative results of two approaches confirmed depletion of competition in Iranian rubber and plastics industries.

Strategic goal of privatization can be economic, social and cultural development, Decreases of companie's costs and size of the government. This study has been done in the framework of benchmarking method in order to transfer experience and the achieved results from reform in different countries and to present executive strategies to the electric power industry policy makers and planners.It is proposed that the government should plan and put into action a comprehensive program for streamlining the path and the atmosphere of the activity of the business institutions and empowerment and support of non-governmental sector and conveyance of the government properties to the non-governmental sector in a comprehensive and integrated manner. Establishment and activation of need infrastructure for accomplishment of the government responsibilities and protection of the market activities are necessary conditions in entering the process of privatization of the electric power industry. Furthermore, the extension of competition atmosphere and increase of compatibility of economic institutions are the requirements of the success of the privatization program. Reforms in electric power industry and privatization of power plants are time consuming processes and any hastiness in these processes will lead the privatization to the path in which not only the expected goals are not achieved, but also in addition to demolish of national wealths, it will result in extensive economic, social and political consequences. The way conveyance of power plants, shall not lead to another monopoly. As one of the most important prerequisites of having competitive market and encouragement of private sector to have presence in electricity market, establishment of competition in wholesale and also retail podiatry of electric power. In other words, establishment of production capacity in proportionate with the consumption peak, formation of electricity stock exchange and possibility of competition among the suppliers at the retail level guarantee the competition and optimal behavior in the market.

Production firms, after subtracting all costs including opportunity and accounting costs, usually gain net economic profit. According to the capitalistic economy’s foundations and the relations established in that regime, this profit belongs to capital and its owner. Net economic profit’s belonging to capital and paying a minimal fixed wage to the skilled, semiskilled and ordinary labor forces have led to the society’s wealth and income’s being intensely concentrated in the hands of some few people. Statistics reveal that wealth and income gap is increasingly getting more severe. The stability of this gap’s growth leads to the stability of poverty in the society. Thus, all the economic systems have remarked their opinion about this kind of profit, and try to adjust, transfer or remove it in the economic relations. Capitalism suggests the perfect competition market model as an instrument for removing the net profit belonging to the capital. However, since perfect competition market is just an unreachable ideal, it hasn’t been successful to do so. Socialism describes abolishing private property and omitting profit principle from economic relations as the solution for removing net economic profit belonging to capital, whose outcome has been vast public poverty. The present article argues that the most appropriate model for solving the problem is that of integrative cooperative economy. Besides determining a suitable reward for capital, this model transfers the net economic profit to the skilled, semi-skilled and ordinary labor forces on the basis of their contribution in its production. Income and wealth distribution, thus, is done in such a way that adjusts the income and wealth gap, provides the favorable propensity, and constrains and reduces poverty. The present article, therefore, using descriptiveanalytical approach, examines these models, and explicating the integrative cooperation on the basis of Islamic teachings, shows that this kind of cooperation manages to transfer net economic profit to labor, and distributes it, within the economic model, between those actually contributing to its production.

The concept of countervailing power is a term to describe the situation in which the market power of one side (sellers) may be balanced by the market power of another side(buyers) in a given market. The purpose of this paper is to test this hypothesis and to determine whether the market power of sellers has had a restraining influence on increases in buyer market power in Iran’s large industries.To this end we use a panelof 4-digit ISICindustries data over the period 1995-2010.The findings of this paper support the countervailing power hypothesise in Iranian large manufacturing industries in whichthe industries with more market power on the seller side and less market power on the buyer side enhance the performance of the firms.

This paper using generalized Roeger''s model calculated the Lerner index for Iranian active industries in 4-digit ISIC codes during the period 1995-2007. The findings indicate that the Lerner index has been between 8 to 16 percent in 38 industries among 131 ones. The index also in different industries shows that more than 50 percent of Iranian industries have monopolistic power such that they have generated a significant gap between price and marginal cost. Comparing the Lerner index with Herfindahl–Hirschman and four - firm concentration ratio indices gives this result that the industries with high concentration ratio have greater value of Lerner index so that The four-firm concentration ratio of 20 industries (among the 29 industries) has had a value more than 40.

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of privatization on competition degree of Iranian manufacturing industry for the period of -During this period,billion Rials are allocated to the private sector of which billion Rials are related to the time after issuing the policy of performing article of Iran’s Constitution. To evaluate the effect of privatization on competition degree of manufacturing industry, panel data model is applied. The findings indicate that privatization in Iran does not have positive effect on the competition. Thus, it seems that the competition-based privatization pattern might be a more reliable policy than alternative models.

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the structural and performance variables in 140 Iranian industries, besides investigating structure of industrial markets according to the Four-firm concentration ratio plus cost advantage ratio (CDR). Then the study estimates efficiency level of the industries under the stochastic frontier technique in 4 digits ISIC code so that finally the relationship between the structure and performance based on the SCP pattern has been examined through the estimated efficiency level. Additionally, we applied the bootstrap approach in order to have more precise judgment on the gained results. The findings indicate that firstly the industries with high concentration intensity are more inefficient, in other words there is an adverse relationship between the monopoly power and efficiency in Iranian industries which obviously imply that Unlike the Chicago notion, here the monopoly power does not originate from the efficiency, and we shall look for other possible reasons pertaining to this phenomena. Secondly, the industries with more intensity of entry barrier are more inefficient, it means that the role of entry barrier due to lack of competition is of significance in creating the inefficiency in the industrial sector. Thirdly, those industries which have more shares of governmental activities compared to private sector indicate lower efficiency. Which mean that there is a negative relationship between the government presence and efficiency of industrial activities.

This study investigates the relationship between market structure and profitability in the Iranian manufacturing industries. In this study، raw data based on international standard industrial classification (at four digit code) has been used. Fixed effects panel estimation method (based on diagnostic test results) has been chosen for empirical investigation. The result of the study confirms the validity of structural approach. The results indicate that most of structural variables have significant effect on the average rate of profitability in the selected industries. The results also show the fact that export sale ratio has no significant effect on the average rate of profitability of firms in the selected industries.

This paper investigates the effect of concentration and advertising on profitability in Iranian Industrial firms, with more than 9 employees. Dynamic panel data technique is used along with the data during the period 1374-1381 to study this issue. The results show that the concentrated industries have a higher profitability than the others. In addition, advertising has a positive effect on the profit of the Iranian industries.

Wide fluctuations of the prices of chicken and egg along with the containment of these fluctuations always matter to producers, consumers and government. These fluctuations are affected by various factors on the supply and demand sides of the product and its inputs. The results of this research are as follows: Contributing 1.5 and 1 per cent to the world production of chicken (76.3 million tons) and egg (61.3 million tons) respectively, Iran is of eighteenth and seventeenth ranks in the world. By comparing domestic and foreign prices of chicken on a floating exchange rate basis during 1991-2005, it is found that the domestic price has been always lower than world price by 1999 but higher afterwards. However, the domestic price of egg has been always lower than its world price. A review of the monthly retail prices of chicken and egg during 1370-84 also suggests that both products have followed a similar price trend. In fact, prices have the highest growth in spring with a slow increase in summer, resurgence in autumn and the lowest growth in winter. In addition to price fluctuations, the most important challenges to Iran's poultry farming are high production costs, long period of production, feed-to-chicken coefficient, and dependence of the poultry farming on input importation, especially feed. According to our findings, in the egg market, 1, 4, 8 and 16 enterprise concentration ratios have been respectively 1.94, 6.58, 10.868 and 17.05 per cent in 1384. Therefore, the market structure of egg production has been competitive. One-enterprise concentration ratio has reduced from 3.2 per cent in 1375 to 1.94 per cent in 1385. Herfindahl index of egg market was about 0.005 in 1375 but reduced to 0.003 in 1384, implying an increased competition in market structure. During 1379-83, Lerner indices of domestic markets of chicken and egg, in comparison with their export markets, have increased from 0.06 and 0.13 to 0.43 and 0.37 respectively, reflecting an increased competition in export market structures of chicken and egg.

Efficiency, optimal allocation of sources depends on competitive performance of markets. To establish competitive markets, maintain and increase efficiency, it is necessary to exist different issues including complete definition of legal ownership, reduction of conventional and exchange costs, facilitating the flow of information among producers and consumers in the markets and also existence of facilitator rules concerning competition and anti-monopoly. In this research, we have collected the statistics of big industrial working places in 2007 and computed the concentration and monopoly indexes for 130 industries by using Hrefindhal – Hirshman and share of better firms indexes. In addition, we have evaluated the role of private and public companies in increasing and reducing the monopoly, and the effective factors in creating & sustaining of monopolies. Results from the research indicates the considerable concentration in Iran’s including in public & private sectors. The most important reason to establish monopolies in the country, either in public or private sectors, is creating input obstacles through laws and regulations.

This paper aims to measure the extent of mark-up and monopoly pricing in different sub sectors of the Iranian manufacturing. We measure annually the degree of monopoly pricing and mark-up for sub sectors over the period from 1959 to 2003. A panel data approach is developed and applied to gauge the mark-up and degree of monopoly pricing The results show that in four sub sectors, including chemical, non-ferrous metals, basic metals and machinery, these kinds of pricing are dominated and it is also prevalent in other sub sectors. Capital intensity and increase in the number of firms in each sector cause a reduction in mark-up while trade liberalization leads to an increase in productivity. The experience of liberalization in Iran over a short period of time confirms that mark-up is reduced, productivity is increased and capital intensity is decreased.