Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/194254 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Citation: 
[Journal:] Estudios de Economía [ISSN:] 0718-5286 [Volume:] 44 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Universidad de Chile, Departamento de Economía [Place:] Santiago de Chile [Year:] 2017 [Pages:] 157-172
Publisher: 
Universidad de Chile, Departamento de Economía, Santiago de Chile
Abstract: 
Motivated by the fact that some regulations involve extra costs for those firms at a size beyond a critical threshold, this paper contributes to the analysis of the welfare distortions due to these regulations. In the context of a duopoly, our results show that social welfare is not monotonic with the regulatory threshold. In particular, we obtain the paradoxical result that a policy decision of increasing the threshold might involve a dramatic decrease in welfare in some markets. An interesting consequence of this result is that the positive discrimination towards small firms is a rather subtle issue. Our results suggest that the relevant regulatory thresholds should differ across industries. Apparently, this is taken into account in some countries (e.g., USA), but not in many other countries.
Subjects: 
Duopoly
welfare
firm size
strategic effects
JEL: 
L11
L13
L52
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-sa Logo
Document Type: 
Article

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