For Policy Makers, Microsoft Suggests Need to Recast Models
By ALAN MURRAY Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- The Microsoft case is just the beginning.
As government policy makers grapple with a rapidly changing American marketplace, they are increasingly struck by this fact: In the New Economy, monopoly is becoming the rule, not the exception.
Whether today's hot companies deal in Web services, business-to-business exchanges or MP3 songs, many have the look of what economics textbooks used to call "natural monopolies." The products and services often involve a relatively big upfront investment. But they cost little or nothing to manufacture and distribute, thanks in part to the ease of spreading digital information over the Internet.
In such a business, it's inexpensive to expand rapidly into a dominant position, and dangerous not to. Competition of the traditional variety, with multiple firms offering nearly identical products and services, can quickly push prices to zero. But how, if at all, should the government respond to these new monopoly-like businesses?
Carefully, says Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. In April, the Fed quietly assembled a half-dozen New Economy experts to discuss the ramifications of these economic changes. One participant was Brian Kelley, who is in charge of global electronic business for Ford Motor Co.
Ford recently joined with General Motors Corp., DaimlerChrysler AG, Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. to form a single linked exchange that the big auto companies will use for purchasing parts. The combined purchasing platform isn't monopolistic, Mr. Kelley insists, but rather is being done "so the auto industry can have standards." The end result will be more competition, he says, not less.
The Federal Trade Commission isn't so sure. It recently announced plans to scrutinize the auto industry's proposal. And at the end of this month, it is holding a workshop to explore the implications of all business-to-business Internet exchanges -- which provide a central platform for transactions among businesses -- "to identify any antitrust issues they raise."
The Question of Harm
Among the questions being addressed, according to the notice in the Federal Register: "What competition issues may be raised by B-2-B electronic marketplaces? What are likely pro-competitive benefits, and what are possible anticompetitive concerns?"
Those aren't easy questions to answer. In the world described by Scottish economist Adam Smith more than two centuries ago, monopolies tended to stifle competition. Freed from direct competition, the monopolist would raise prices and harm consumers.
But in today's world, many New Economy enthusiasts argue, the quest for monopoly can actually prompt competition. At the Fed meeting in April, business theorist Hal Varian referred to it as "hypercompetition." Like purchasers of lottery tickets, companies seem even more eager to compete when they know the winner will take all. Instead of competing on price, they compete by innovating, and trying to leapfrog old technologies.
"When there is a big prize at the end of the day, you will see this hypercompetitive struggle to catch the brass ring," says Mr. Varian, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
The Fed governors attending the meeting heard a similar argument from Ken Fox, who runs Internet Capital Group, which invests in business-to-business e-commerce companies.
'Winner Take Most'
"We are truly going through a renaissance," says Mr. Fox. "The way companies buy and sell is changing. The way they collaborate is changing. And these are scale businesses; they do tend to be 'winner take most.' Information, transactions, tend to accrue to the No. 1 player in the market, whether it is because they set the standards or they have critical mass."
Does that mean the government's antitrust forces will have to get more active, doing to other companies what they have done to Microsoft Corp.? The Clinton administration's top economist, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, steadfastly refuses to comment on the Microsoft case, as do other administration officials. But he gave an intriguing speech in San Francisco last month, titled "The New Wealth of Nations," that suggested the proliferation of natural monopolies is more good than bad.
In an information-based economy, he said, "the only incentive to produce anything is the possession of temporary monopoly power -- because without that power the price will be bid down to the marginal cost and the high initial fixed costs cannot be recouped." (The "marginal cost" is the cost of producing and distributing, say, one more widget.) Mr. Summers went on: "So the constant pursuit of that monopoly power becomes the central driving thrust of the New Economy. And the creative destruction that results from all that striving becomes the essential spur of economic growth."
Mr. Greenspan also avoids public comment on the Microsoft case; but in private, he's known to question whether traditional antitrust theory is applicable in this new world. While he recognizes that the New Economy means more companies have the characteristics of natural monopolies, he avoids using the term in public because it suggests a lack of competition.
When he testified recently on the financial markets, for instance, Mr. Greenspan described a future in which the various markets will inevitably fuse into one. He used characteristically circumspect language, but Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana picked up on what he was saying.
"Do I understand your testimony to be to the effect that the financial markets ... tend toward natural monopoly over time?" Sen. Bayh asked.
'A Tricky Problem'
"Well, there is a tricky problem with people's definition of what constitutes 'natural monopoly,' " the Fed chief replied. "And I think that, rather than get into the debate on various different types of natural monopolies, what I would specify is that what we are dealing with is aconvergence toward a single form of operation."
In any event, he suggested that a single financial market is no cause for concern, since it is both "the result of competition" and "the enhancer of competition."
The relentless push toward monopoly in today's economy is increased by something economists call "network effects." In information businesses, the desire for everyone to be part of the same network is intense. Schoolchildren like to use America Online Inc.'s instant-messaging service because their friends use it. Computer users like Microsoft's Word software because it makes it easier to trade files with their colleagues, who also use Word. In his speech in San Francisco, Mr. Summers used the fax machine to describe this network effect. If there is only one, it "is best used as a doorstop." But if there are 100,000, "that is 10 billion possible connections."
These network effects are enhanced further by the Internet, which provides a means of linking thousands or millions of people. EBay Inc. dominates the online-auction market because it is the biggest. Sellers go there to reach the most buyers; buyers go there to reach the most sellers. Business-to-business exchanges will tend to work in the same way, with the largest player quickly becoming dominant.
As a result, scarcity, the driving force behind Adam Smith's economy, loses its punch. A piece of software or a Web site or an Internet exchange becomes more valuable with each new user.
Argument for Ubiquity
Moreover, in a network world, the monopolist faces incentives different from those of the Old Economy. Jeremy Bulow, who directs the Bureau of Economics at the Federal Trade Commission, notes that the diamond monopoly of DeBeers Consolidated Mines Ltd. works to keep its product scarce, so prices stay high and consumers suffer.
But for software makers, the scarcity principle is turned upside down. Like Microsoft, such companies have every incentive to try to make their product ubiquitous. The more users they find for their software, the more value it will have for each user, and the more incentive there is for software makers to write related software. In such a situation, consumers may reap the benefits.
Even the Justice Department was forced to acknowledge this new fact of life last month, in its antitrust case against Microsoft. Attorney David Boies told Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson that the government had decided against dividing Microsoft's Windows monopoly among three new companies because such a solution would be "unstable." The reason: Windows is a natural monopoly. Competition among the new companies would drive the price of Windows to zero, and destroy the business.
That also explains why the Justice Department didn't charge Microsoft with predatory pricing, for giving away its Internet browser free of charge and forcing Netscape to do the same. Predatory-pricing law applies to companies that sell below cost. But for the browser software, the cost at the margin is zero.
The Natural Order
These actions by the nation's competition cops show that they realize that in the New Economy, competition of the classic variety doesn't work. Instead, monopoly -- even if it is only a temporary monopoly, soon to be overthrown by another -- is the natural order.
Joel Klein, the assistant attorney general for antitrust who brought the Microsoft case, argues that all the talk about the New Economy misses the point. Microsoft's crime lay not in having a monopoly, but in using illegal tactics to both protect that monopoly and extend it into new markets.
"While technology changes," he told a technology forum at the University of California at Berkeley last month, "human nature does not." The anticompetitive techniques "used to protect and extend monopoly power in the New Economy are essentially no different from those used throughout history. ... When it comes to antitrust enforcement, the new, new thing isn't so new after all."
But even if the legal characteristics of the New Economy aren't changing, the economic characteristics clearly are. In Adam Smith's economy, widget makers would compete to drive down the price of widgets to something close to the marginal cost. That is the secret of the "invisible hand," which is supposed to ensure that a bunch of individuals aggressively pursuing their selfish interests also end up serving society's best interests.
But in the New Economy, when the marginal cost is sometimes nil, that model of competition doesn't work. So the question of how to ensure that society's interest gets served becomes more complex.
Patent Issues
Patent and copyright law is one area where these new realities come into play. In a way, many New Economy industries are like the pharmaceutical business, which spends huge amounts of money on research and development, but relatively little on the actual manufacture of drugs. Drug makers are able to recoup their R&D costs with the help of government patents, which grant them a temporary monopoly and shield them from competition. But in such a system, determining the right price is problematic. The drug companies have recently come under heavy criticism in Congress, where members complain they charge high prices to Americans, but often much less overseas.
Getting patent policy right in the software business may be even trickier. Should Priceline.com Inc. have been allowed to patent reverse auctions, and shield itself from competition? Should Amazon.com Inc. have been allowed to patent its "one-click" purchasing method? "Are we going overboard in protecting intellectual property?" asks Carl Shapiro, co-author, with Berkeley's Prof. Varian, of the book "Information Rules." "In some of these areas, I think we are."
For the Fed, a key question is how these new developments affect the overall performance of the economy. Do they boost productivity and help hold down inflation? Are those effects temporary, or are they permanent? Does the existence of more New Economy businesses help minimize business cycles? Or will they make a downturn worse when the next recession hits?
In his speech in California, Mr. Summers argued that the Old Economy was a "negative feedback" economy. When wheat prices rise, farmers produce more and consumers buy less. But the information economy, he said, will increasingly be "a positive feedback" economy: Rising demand drives higher efficiency and higher returns, which push down prices and push demand even higher.
"In such a world," he said, "the avalanche, rather than the thermostat, becomes the more attractive metaphor for economic policy."