دانلود رایگان مقاله ساختار بازار و سرمایه گذاری در صنعت تلفن همراه

abstract

 The impact of market structure, that is the number of firms and asymmetry, on investment is an important topic in the mobile industry. However, previous literature remains ambiguous about the direction of the relationship. This paper provides an empirical evidence of the impact of market structure on investment in the European mobile industry. The empirical assessment is based on a Salop model with vertical differentiation. Consistently with the prediction of this model, we find that both the number of operators and market share asymmetry have significant effects on investment. In symmetric markets, investment per operator falls with the number of operators, with larger effects for operators that lose market share more than the average. The industry investment rises with the number of operators in the short run, but eventually falls in the long run due to significant adjustment costs of investment in the mobile industry. These findings suggest that investment should be taken into account when analysing the welfare effects of market structure in the mobile industry.

5. Conclusion

Consistently with the prediction of the theoretical model, this paper finds that the effect of market structure on investment strongly depends on asymmetry. In particular, investment per operator falls with the number of operators in symmetric markets. This negative effect is larger for operators who lose market share more than the average. In symmetric markets, the industry investment increases with the number of operators in the short run but eventually falls in the long run. These results are consistent with the theoretical predictions of Vives (2008) in symmetric markets and Schmutzler (2013) in asymmetric markets. They are also consistent with Genakos et al. (2015) who find a negative relationship between the number of mobile operators and their investment. The positive effect of market size on investment accords well with the findings of Beneito et al. (2015). However, our findings do not lend support to a nonmonotonic relationship between competition and investment as found by Sacco and Schmutzler (2011). They are also not in line with the conclusions of a recent OECD report advocating for more mobile operators as a means to improve the quality of mobile telecommunications services (OECD, 2014).