The Current State of the Law and Economics of Predatory Pricing
The Current State of the Law and Economics of Predatory Pricing
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掠夺性定价的法律和经济学现状
DOI：
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发表时间：
1993
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通讯作者：
A. Klevorick
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作者：
A. Klevorick
自从菲利普阿瑞达和唐纳德F。特纳介绍了他们对掠夺性定价的反垄断政策的建议。他们在1975年发表于《哈佛法律评论》的文章《谢尔曼法案第2条下的掠夺性定价和相关做法》在法律的学者和经济学家中引发了激烈的争论，这场争论主要是在法律评论中持续了好几年。争议集中在核心的Areeda-Turner（AT）测试上，该测试提出短期边际成本作为合法价格的适当但难以衡量的标准，并推荐合理预期的平均可变成本作为替代。讨论包括审议其他基于成本的措施，以及限制占支配地位的公司定价和产出政策的替代规则，以及结构化和开放式的理性规则分析。这场争论也有助于阐明阿瑞达和特纳对他们的提议所施加的限制。关于反垄断法检验标准的辩论的核心问题之一是，它是否充分重视掠夺性定价的动态和战略性质。所有参与讨论的人，包括Areeda和Turner本人，都认识到，由于掠夺性定价的本质是掠夺者牺牲短期收益来换取长期收益（以及随之而来的对公众的伤害），因此所解决的问题本质上是战略性的。然而，参与辩论的律师和经济学家对于是否可以采取任何实际措施来科普跨期战略问题存在分歧。Areeda和Turner依赖于支配企业行为的静态模型来得出他们的检验，这反映了他们对一个健全的法律的规则是否能够被塑造来科普长期考虑的固有的“投机性和不确定性”评估的怀疑。奇怪的是，正当法律评论界的争论逐渐平息时，市场组织文献开始看到一股使用现代博弈论概念和技术来分析寡头垄断市场中战略企业行为的明确模型的力量。特别是，一些重要的贡献分析了市场模型，其中掠夺性定价作为一套均衡策略的一部分出现。这些贡献有效地削弱了这样一种观点，即由于潜在捕食者的成本，捕食是非理性的，因此不太可能发生。在雅努什·奥多弗（Janusz Ordover）和加思·塞隆纳（Garth Saloner）（1989）为《产业组织手册》（The Handbook of Industrial Organization）撰写的章节中，对这一工作进行了很好的分类和考察。这类模型的一个中心特征是市场参与者之间的信息不对称。占主导地位的现任公司比它的较小的竞争对手更好地了解模型中的捕食者诱导退出竞争对手;现任者比潜在的进入者更好地了解模型中的捕食采取进入威慑的形式;和公司一般更好地了解他们的前景比他们的融资来源。关于掠夺的新的市场组织文献提供了三种主要类型的模型。首先，有发达的博弈论分析的长期钱包或深口袋理论的捕食，理论莱斯特G。Telser（1966）在之前的一份完全信息分析报告中分析过：Paul Joskow，马萨诸塞州理工学院; Joseph Stiglitz，斯坦福大学。
It has been almost 20 years since Phillip Areeda and Donald F. Turner introduced their proposals for antitrust policy toward predatory pricing. Their 1975 Harvard Law Review article, "Predatory Pricing and Related Practices under Section 2 of the Sherman Act," sparked a lively debate among legal scholars and economists that continued, mostly in law reviews, for several years. The controversy focused on the core Areeda-Turner (AT) test, which put forward short-run marginal cost as the appropriate, but difficult-to-measure, standard of a lawful price and recommended reasonably anticipated average variable cost as a surrogate. The discussion included consideration of other cost-based measures, as well as alternative rules restricting dominant-firm pricing and output policies and both structured and open-textured rule-of-reason analyses. The controversy also helped to illuminate the qualifications that Areeda and Turner imposed on their proposal. One of the central issues in the debate concerning the AT test was whether or not it gave sufficient weight to the dynamic and strategic character of predatory pricing. All the participants in the discussion, including Areeda and Turner themselves, recognized that since the essence of predatory pricing is the predator's sacrifice of short-run gains for longer-run gains (and consequent harm to the public), the problem being addressed is inherently strategic. The lawyers and economists engaged in the debate differed, however, about whether anything practical could be done to cope with the intertemporal strategic issues. Areeda and Turner's reliance on a static model of dominant-firm behavior to derive their test reflected their doubt that a sound legal rule could be fashioned to cope with the inherently "speculative and indeterminate" assessment of longrun considerations. Curiously enough, just as the debate in the law reviews was winding down, the market-organization literature was beginning to see an infusion of contributions that used modern game-theoretic concepts and techniques to analyze well-specified models of strategic firm behavior in oligopolistic markets. In particular, several important contributions analyzed models of markets in which predatory pricing emerged as part of a set of equilibrium strategies. These contributions effectively undermined the view that, because of its costs to the would-be predator, predation is irrational and hence not likely to occur. This work is well categorized and well surveyed in the chapter that Janusz Ordover and Garth Saloner (1989) contributed to The Handbook of Industrial Organization. A central feature of this class of models is some asymmetry of information between market actors. The dominant incumbent firm is better informed than its smaller rival in models where the predator induces exit of competitors; the incumbent is better informed than potential entrants in models where predation takes the form of entry deterrence; and firms in general are better informed about their prospects than are their sources of financing. The new market-organization literature on predation offered three major types of models. First, there were well-developed game-theoretic analyses of the long-purse or deep-pocket theories of predation, theories which Lester G. Telser (1966) had analyzed earlier in a perfect-information tDiscussants: Paul Joskow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Joseph Stiglitz, Stanford University.