مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد کارتل سازی ناکافی در اوپک (الزویر)

OPEC’s longevity, given predictions of its demise by experts and the textbook cartelization model has come as a surprise to many. A growing body of literature (see e.g., Smith, 2005; Kaufmann et al., 2008) now suggests that OPEC is not and should not be regarded as a perfectly colluding (i.e., standard) cartel. Indeed, concessions made when bargaining for quotas may engender production allocations that vastly diverge from those of a perfect cartel. While economic theory prescribes that perfect cartels must assign quotas so that marginal revenues (alternatively, full marginal costs1 ) are equalized across members (Schmalensee, 1987), OPEC’s actual quota allocation scheme plausibly diverges from this rule. Technically, equalization of marginal revenues requires that the least efficient (i.e., high cost and low reserve) producers cut their production, so as to accommodate for relatively higher production shares from more efficient (i.e., low cost and large reserve) producers. For OPEC, this means that Saudi Arabia would front-load its production, while high cost producers, such as Venezuela, would postpone theirs to a time when their (full) marginal costs of extraction are in line with those of Saudi Arabia.2 The reverse, however, has been observed for OPEC and some other cartels such as the Railroad Commission of Texas3 where, the less efficient (i.e., the small and generally high cost) producers tend to acquire larger than proportionate production shares (Griffin and Xiong, 1997; Libecap, 1989). These less efficient producers are given unproportionally larger quotas, as if to bribe their participation in the cartel. As shown in Polasky (1992), such a quota allocation scheme conforms more to non-cooperative oligopoly behavior than perfect cartelization.