Competition and Entrepreneurship As Engines of Growth
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Competition and Entrepreneurship as Engines of Growth 1 Abstract The thesis aims to bridge topics traditionally belonging to different areas of the subject: competition and entrepreneurship coming from microeconomics and industrial organization; and growth, from macroeconomics. It centres around the notion that market structure and conduct affect performance and hence growth. Firms optimize by anticipating changes in consumers' demand and in suppliers' behaviour, which are a function of the market structure and its changes. Market-entry can be explained by the level of competition in a market which can be altered by the implementation of specific policies (for instance, the way a competition authority handles mergers). Failing to have an appropriate antitrust regime will ultimately harm entrepreneurship since it will affect one's ability to understand and to handle the risks associated with launching a new venture. The thesis also explores how different definitions of entrepreneurship explain varying innovation mechanisms (neck-and-neck and leapfrogging) and how this dovetails with the structure and conduct within a market. For transition economies, we find that competition policy has played a growth- enhancing role and that this effect may be larger than the impact associated with privatization, and we also find evidence of policies' complementarities. These findings are also echoed by our individual-level analysis. We analyse the determinants of high growth expectations entrepreneurial entry (HGE) using individual data drawn on working age population, based on the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor surveys for the 1998-2004 period. We find that HGE is more likely to occur when the entrepreneur perceives a gap in the market with no other producers supplying the same product. This reinforces the theory that the amount of competition faced by an entrepreneur affects the rate of HGE and also provides a microeconomic foundation for the country-level growth effects described for transition countries. 2 I, Gian Fazio confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Elements of this thesis are the result of work with other authors: Chapter 4 was co-authored with Paul Hutchinson; Chapter 5 is based on a paper which was co-authored with Tomasz Mickiewicz; parts of section 6.1 are based on a paper co-authored with Katherine Lam and Felix Ritchie. 3 Acknowledgements Over the last few years I have come in contact with many people in relation to my thesis who have all somehow played a role in the development of this work. I am grateful to my colleagues at the Office of Fair Trading and in particular to Simon Pritchard, Alastair Mordaunt, Amelia Fletcher, Nicholas Scola, Lucilia Falsarella- Pereira, Paul Hutchinson, Chris Walters and Adrian Payne for helpful suggestions and to all economists in the OFT‟s mergers branch for their help in constructing the dataset used in Chapter 4. A considerable part of the analysis conducted would not have been possible without data provided by Paul Reynolds and the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, and the European Venture Capital Association. I would like to thank my colleagues at University College London: Valentina, Chiara, Olivia, Barbara and Zlatko and some people who have been close to me over the last five years and whose support has made a difference: Alessandro, Daniele, Ali, Emily, Gerald, Ela, Bogdan and, in particular, Karolina. I would also like to express my gratitude to my parents who have stood by me unconditionally and patiently throughout this adventure - I doubt I would have come this far without them. Above all, however, I am most indebted to my supervisor, Prof. Tomasz Mickiewicz, whose numerous comments and suggestions pushed me to think and rethink many points of my analysis and whose constant encouragement helped me to stay the course when I longed for the safety of a port. 4 "We learn ... not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are." Leszek Kołakowski 5 Ai miei genitori: Maria e Antonio 6 Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ 2 Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................... 4 List of Figures ................................................................................................................................. 10 List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. 11 List of Abbreviations ...................................................................................................................... 13 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 15 Chapter 1: Competing to Innovate ................................................................................................ 24 1.1. Models of competition and innovation ........................................................................ 26 1.2. Towards a unified theory .............................................................................................. 29 1.3. Empirics ......................................................................................................................... 32 1.4. Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 2: Competition Policy and Entrepreneurship ................................................................... 38 2.1. On the figure of the entrepreneur ................................................................................ 42 2.1.1. Measuring entrepreneurship ................................................................................. 43 2.2. On the rules of the game: competition policy .............................................................. 44 2.2.1. Market definition and competition policy: one size fits all? ................................. 47 2.3. Empirical studies ........................................................................................................... 49 2.3.1. On measuring competition – measures of concentration ..................................... 50 2.3.2. Other measures of competition ............................................................................. 54 2.3.3. On measuring competition policy .......................................................................... 55 2.4. An investigation of the relationship between competition policy and entrepreneurship ............................................................................................................................................. 57 2.5. Conclusions .................................................................................................................. 63 Chapter 3: Growth in Transition: the Role of Competition Policy ................................................. 65 3.1. Competition policy in context: timing and reforms’ complementarities ............................... 67 3.1.1. Competition policy and privatisation ..................................................................... 70 7 3.1.2. A note on ownership .............................................................................................. 73 3.2. Description of the data ................................................................................................. 74 3.3. Empirics: models and results ........................................................................................ 78 3.4. Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 81 Chapter 4: To Refer or Not to Refer: an Empirical Analysis of Merger Policy ............................... 84 4.1. Literature review ........................................................................................................... 85 4.1.1. The process of merger analysis within the OFT ..................................................... 87 4.2. The dataset ................................................................................................................... 89 4.2.1. Sample.................................................................................................................... 89 4.2.2. Analytical framework and variables’ description .................................................. 91 4.3. Methodology ................................................................................................................. 95 4.3.1. The model .............................................................................................................. 95 4.3.2. Results .................................................................................................................... 97 4.3.3. Fascia counts as alternative measures of market structure ................................ 102 4.4. Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 103 Chapter 5: On the Determinants of High Growth Entrepreneurship: Competition, Innovation and Venture Capital ..................................................................................................................... 106 5.1.