Opinion Leader | Pan Helin
In recent years, with the rapid development of the digital economy, monopoly has attracted more attention while improving the quality of economic development and providing consumers with greater convenience and higher quality of life. Last year's Central Economic Work Conference mentioned the need to prevent the disorderly expansion of capital. It can be seen that this year, the supervision of the Internet field has indeed become significantly stricter, especially antitrust. On April 13, the State Administration of Market Supervision and Administration, together with the Central Cyberspace Office and the State Administration of Taxation, held an administrative guidance meeting for Internet platform enterprises, which was attended by representatives of 34 Internet platform enterprises. The meeting required that all platform enterprises should conduct comprehensive self inspection and self inspection within one month, make thorough rectifications one by one, and disclose the Commitment to Legal and Compliant Operation to the public to accept social supervision.
Before that, there were many anti-monopoly regulations in the Internet field, and the Internet industry has become the main position of anti-monopoly. At the 21st meeting of the Central Committee for the Comprehensive Deepening of Reform on August 30, General Secretary Xi stressed that strengthening anti-monopoly and promoting the implementation of fair competition policies are the internal requirements for improving the socialist market economy system. From the strategic height of building a new development pattern, promoting high-quality development and promoting common prosperity, we should promote the formation of a fair market environment, create broad development space for various market entities, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, and better protect the rights and interests of consumers.
However, it should be noted that the meeting stressed the need to balance development and safety, efficiency and fairness, vitality and order, domestic and international, adhere to both regulatory norms and promotion of development, and both should be hard, clear rules, draw the bottom line, set a good "traffic light", guide and urge enterprises to obey the leadership of the Party, obey and serve the overall situation of economic and social development, Encourage and support enterprises to play an active role in promoting scientific and technological progress, prospering the market economy, facilitating people's lives, and participating in international competition. The signal released by this formulation indicates that the next step is not to blindly expand the scope of anti-monopoly, but to adhere to the equal emphasis on development and supervision.
In fact, when we look at the anti-monopoly governance in recent years, we can find that the definition of Internet anti-monopoly is still a pain and difficulty, especially if we consider the definition of monopoly from different perspectives, things will become more complex. From the economic perspective, monopoly is mainly reflected in pricing, from the legal perspective, monopoly is mainly reflected in the market environment image, and from the public governance perspective, monopoly is mainly reflected in tax and welfare. In the current case, we define Internet monopoly more from the economic and legal aspects, and more consider the pricing power and market dominance of Internet enterprises.
This approach starts from the traditional monopoly theory. However, the profit model and business model of Internet enterprises are very different from those of traditional enterprises. If the traditional theory is still copied in the definition of nature, it may lead to wrong killing or manslaughter. Policy pressure is likely to apply the same treatment to all enterprises that meet the monopoly nature, thus hindering the development of the industry. Therefore, it is of great significance to put equal emphasis on regulation and development at this meeting.
Under the condition of incomplete information and the influence of subjective and objective factors, the transaction contract becomes very complex if the transaction is in line with the interests of both parties. In order to pursue a complete contract, it is bound to increase the corresponding costs. As a result, due to the high cost of market contracts, some transactions are conducted in the form of intra enterprise transactions. This is the essence of the enterprise pointed out by Coase. It is a non price coordination mechanism. The enterprise management system and entrepreneurs replace the occurrence of more subtle transactions to coordinate economic production. Since the development of Internet enterprises, theoretically speaking, it is completely the result of market-oriented operation, and the Internet model will inevitably mean that they have a corresponding scale.
The author believes that the creation of Internet anti-monopoly rules is a public choice to maximize social welfare when the economy and society have reached a certain stage of development and the current resource endowment. However, the rationality of the rules still needs to be considered. Admittedly, for technical reasons, it is difficult for us to fully identify the real monopoly behavior of Internet enterprises, but the use of traditional monopoly measurement methods of grafting is very likely to lead to the occurrence of sub optimal phenomenon. The biggest significance of "both hands are important, both hands must be hard" is to enable law enforcement departments not to be kidnapped by the simple values of the public, and to judge monopoly facts and monopoly consequences from a more objective perspective, so as to minimize the negative impact of anti-monopoly law enforcement on market vitality and maximize the healthy operation of the market, which is a necessary prerequisite for maintaining a fully competitive market environment.
(About the author: Executive Dean and Professor of the Institute of Digital Economy, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law)
