2008, Vol.17, No.1

Journal of Regulation Studies 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.78

pISSN : 1738-7132
https://journal.kci.go.kr/ksrs2002

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the welfare effect of regulating premium offers in Korean newspaper industry. First we propose that, since the purpose of the regulation is to prevent the concentration of public opinion, the appropriate market definition is better to expanded to the whole speech market, including TV, internet, etc. We then show that there doesn't exist any market power not only in the whole speech market but in the narrowly-defined newspaper market. Finally, we prove, using a theoretic model, that offering premiums is not an anti-competitive behavior but a standard price discrimination which is known as a welfare-neutral market strategy.

In this study, we investigate how so called screen quota, a quantitative regulation of foreign movies affected movie release decision of movie theaters in Korea by using micro data of individual theater between 1993-2004. Unlike most of previous studies, we can isolate the effects from other factors by comparing the theaters which have sufficed domestic movie quota with the theaters which are not yet freed from the constraint at a same point of time. Empirical results show that there is no statistical difference between two groups of movie theaters in the period of 2001-2004, but the theaters which had not fulfilled the quota obligation were releasing less foreign movies in 1993-1998, a recession period of the Korean movie industry. Variety effects of the regulation are not proved to have existed independent of period. That is, screen share of released Korean movies are not statistically different between two groups of theaters.

While multi-level marketing and door-to-door marketing have similarities in that they comprise large market shares in the distribution industry, they have one big difference in terms of sales agents' compensation scheme, notably cumulative bonus payment in multi-level marketing. This paper theoretically shows that in multi-level marketing, upper-level agents put more effort into recruiting lower-level agents. On the contrary, all agents, regardless of level in door-to-door marketing, put more effort into selling goods directly. Moreover, unit bonus payment for recruiting lower-level agents is likely to be larger in multi-level marketing than in door-to-door-marketing, which leads to higher sales price of goods in multi-level marketing than that in door-to-door marketing. In addition, when each agent is faced with segmented market demand, recruiting activities for lower-level agents are more aggressive in multi-level marketing than in door-to-door marketing. As a result, the sales network expands quicker in multi-level marketing, thus stirring up more speculative spirit. The related empirical facts support this paper's implications derived from theoretical analysis.