PRACTICAS PREDATORIAS

Fumagalli/Motta han publicado un artículo en el que exponen una teoría sobre prácticas predatorias que explica bien muchos casos analizados por las autoridades de competencia. Su tesis es que basta con

"the co-existence of scale economies and sequential buyers (or markets). Intuitively, our mechanism works as follows. In an industry where there exist scale economies (which can be either on the supply side or the demand side), the incumbent engages in below-cost pricing to some early buyers (or markets) to deprive the entrant of key profits it would need to operate successfully, thereby deterring its entry into the industry. Once secured those early buyers and pre-empted entry, the incumbent will be able to raise prices on the remaining buyers (or markets), thereby recouping losses. The two usual ingredients of predation, early sacrifice of profits followed by later recoupment once the prey has exited, are therefore present in our theory as well. In our model, the incumbent may exclude a more efficient entrant even if the latter has the possibility to match the former's offers. When the incumbent and the entrant 'fight' to win the early buyers, the entrant will benefit from higher (marginal) cost efficiency, but it will at most get duopoly profits on the later buyers, since the incumbent has already sunk its entry costs (or it has already the minimum customer base needed to operate profitably) and will therefore not exit the market. Instead, the incumbent knows that by deterring early entry it will enjoy monopoly profits in the future, and this - other things being equal - prompts it to cut prices more on the earlier buyers (or markets). As long as its marginal cost is not too high, the incumbent will be able to successfully prey upon the rival. Otherwise, the early buyers will buy (at prices lower than the incumbent's marginal costs) from the entrant and predation will not succeed".

Muy interesante. Porque explica por qué los early buyers aceptan la oferta del incumbente: los precios más elevados en el futuro no los soportarán ellos, de ahí que los autores digan que su trabajo está relacionado con los modelos de contract externalities (cuando un contrato tiene efectos perjudiciales para terceros, o sea, lo que los juristas llamamos un acuerdo colusorio). Casos que esta teoría explica bien son los de Napp (venta a cero de morfina a los hospitales y a precios elevados a los particulares), Cardiff Bus (réplica por el incumbente de la oferta del entrante fijando un precio por debajo de sus costes hasta que se retira el entrante), Deutsche Post (subsidios cruzados entre la parte del negocio liberalizada y la monopolizada). Y también explica por qué puede acusarse de abuso de posición de dominio a una empresa que (la incumbente en un mercado próximo al analizado) carece de cuota de mercado (en el mercado en el que se ha producido o se puede producir la entrada). En realidad, lo normal es que se trate de segmentos diferentes de un mismo mercado de producto (en el caso Napp, morfina para consumo en tratamientos hospitalarios y en tratamientos ambulatorios).