【英语生活】“大佬”难当

Natural monopolies – industries in which it is difficult for more than one company to survive – seem the easiest, most rewarding of business opportunities. It is not as easy as you think.

Natural monopoly has two main sources. Economies of scale may be large relative to the size of the market. However, lower production costs are often outweighed by the inflexibility of corporate bureaucracy. History is littered with fallen titans, from United Steel to IBM, whose leadership once seemed impregnable.

The manufacture of large commercial aircraft has greater scale economies than any other industrial process. However, with two companies competing for the natural monopoly, life is always tough for either Boeing or Airbus. Natural monopoly may be the result of the modest size of a market niche. But that is a problem as well as an opportunity.

Natural monopolies are also found when all customers benefit from using the same supplier. Like everyone who taught introductory economics, I used to point to local telephone services – people wanted to be connected to the network that had most subscribers – and competition in telephone services became possible only when regulators insisted that new competitors were given access to the incumbent's customers. If I were teaching that course today, I would talk to my students about Ebay. Markets for homogeneous commodities are natural monopolies, because people flock to where the active trading is.

For decades, securities exchanges operated as natural monopolies. However, that stable industry structure has been disturbed both by consolidation and fragmentation. First, Nasdaq won new listings from the New York Stock Exchange with lower costs and better technology. Then dominant exchanges were slow to see the potential of derivatives and Chicago and Liffe grabbed market share. Competition developed between established exchanges in the same securities. New technology allowed entirely new trading platforms. Next year, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive reduces the regulatory advantages of incumbent European exchanges and a group of leading investment banks has just announced a new pan-European exchange.

The basic economics of natural monopoly emphasise two main phrases: “sunk costs” and “contestability”. Sunk costs are the costs of entering a market that you cannot recover if you leave it: the costs you must incur to be able to deliver the good or service even if nobody buys it. Existing suppliers have already invested in sunk costs but new suppliers will have to invest in them to get into the game. So these costs are the measure of existing suppliers' advantage. The higher the sunk costs, the lower is contestability. A perfectly contestable natural monopoly is still a natural monopoly, but such a business might be forced to behave like a competitive industry because behaviour is constrained by the prospect of “hit and run competition”.

This is the history of securities exchanges. Incumbents survived as natural monopolies because they did not exercise their market power. But when they used or abused it, they began to lose it. The New York Stock Exchange took advantage of the maxim that the best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life, resisting new technology and preserving outmoded trading arrangements. Then a wave of demutualisation set shareholders seeking higher profits and executives in pursuit of self-aggrandisement. New competition was the inevitable consequence. The paradox of contestability is that you can have a natural monopoly only so long as you behave as if you do not.

So will the new European platform, succeed? Only because it will help demonstrate that no exchange can, in the long run, be a very profitable business. The success of the project will be judged, not by its own profitability, but by its effect on the sponsor's costs. Exchanges are destined to be low margin monopolies and such a market structure will inevitably emerge – in one set of hands or another. “O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength: but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant.” And, Shakespeare might have added, often inimical to shareholder value

自然垄断——在某些行业中，很难容纳一个以上的企业生存——似乎是最轻松、最有利的商业机遇。但它并不像你想象的那么轻松。

产生自然垄断，有两个主要原因。相对于市场规模，规模效益可能很大。然而，生产成本的降低，往往被企业官僚主义的顽固性抵消。历史上尽是些陨落的“巨头”，从United Steel到IBM，它们的领袖地位都曾看似牢不可破。



与其它工业生产过程相比，制造大型商用飞机有更大的规模经济效应。然而，由于有两家公司争夺自然垄断地位，所以无论是波音(Boeing)，还是空中客车(Airbus)，日子都一直不太好过。自然垄断也许是一个细分市场规模适度的结果。但它既是个难题，也是个机遇。

当所有消费者受益于使用同一个供应商时，自然垄断也会出现。像所有讲授经济学入门课程的人一样，我过去常以本地电话服务为例——人们都希望连入用户最多的网络——只有当监管机构坚持要让新的竞争者能够接触现有运营商的客户时，电话服务的竞争才有可能出现。如果我在今天讲授这门课程，就会与学生们讨论Ebay。同类商品的市场是自然垄断市场，因为人们会涌向交易活跃的地方。



数十年来，证券交易所一直是自然垄断行业。然而，那种稳定的产业结构，同时受到了整合和分化的干扰。首先，纳斯达克(Nasdaq)以较低的成本和更先进的技术，从纽约证交所(New York Stock Exchange)那里抢到了新的上市公司。其后，占据主导地位的各大交易所，在发现衍生品潜力方面行动迟缓，因此芝加哥商交所和伦敦国际金融期货期权交易所(Liffe)夺取了市场份额。在相同的证券上，现有的证交所之间展开了竞争。新技术带来了全新的交易平台。明年，“金融工具市场指令”(Markets in Financial Instruments Directive)将减少现有欧洲证交所管理方面的优势，同时，一些主要的投资银行刚刚宣布成立一个新的泛欧交易所。



自然垄断的基础经济学强调两个关键词：“沉没成本”(sunk costs)和“可竞争性”(contestability)。沉没成本是进入市场的成本，即便你离开，也无法收回：为了提供货物或服务，你必须承担的成本，即便没人购买它们。现有供应商已投入了沉没成本，但新供应商不得不对其投资，以便参与游戏。因此，这些成本是对现有供应商优势的量度。沉没成本越高，可竞争性就越低。一种充分竞争的自然垄断，仍是自然垄断，但这样的业务可能被迫像竞争行业那样行事，因为其行为受制于“打了就跑式竞争”的前景。





这就是证交所的历史。现有证交所作为自然垄断行业存活下来，是因为它们没有行使其市场权力。但当它们使用或滥用这种权力时，它们就开始丧失这种权力。纽约证交所利用了这样的座右铭：垄断的最大益处是太平日子，于是它抵制新的技术，保留过时的交易安排。另一方面，公司化潮流促使股东追逐更高利润，而企业高管则追求自身利益的最大化。新的竞争是不可避免的结果。可竞争性的自相矛盾之处在于，只有当你做得不像是自然垄断的时候，你才能达到自然垄断的境界。



那么新的欧洲平台会成功吗？只因为它有助于表明，从长期来讲，没有哪家证交所会是利润非常丰厚的业务。这个项目是否成功，将不是通过其自身盈利能力、而是通过其对发起人成本的影响来判断的。交易所注定是低利润的垄断行业，而这样的市场结构不可避免地会出现——不管经营者是谁。“唉！有着巨人一样的膂力是一件好事，可是把它像一个巨人一样使用出来，却是残暴的行为。”（莎士比亚戏剧《一报还一报》中的台词——译者注）而莎士比亚可能会加上一句，这往往不利于股东价值。



译者/梁鸥