통신시장에서의 진입장벽 평가 체계 연구

Abstract

Whether there exist effective entry barriers or not in a certain industry is one of the crucial elements in the process of evaluating incumbents' market power in that market. The main purpose of this study is to draw competition-policy implications of entry/exit analysis in the rapidly changing telecommunications industry by surveying various sources of entry barriers and analyzing practical issues related to the way of assessing entry conditions. I critically review conflicts among various definitions of entry barriers in the literature of industrial organization in economics. Based on the theoretical findings, I suggest an eight-step procedure for assessing entry conditions of the telecommunication markets: (i) Market definition and entry by production substituters, (ii) Market conditions and historical entry, (iii) Assessment of absolute cost advantages and essential facilities, (iv) Assessment of sunk costs, scale economies, and capital requirements, (v) Assessment of product differentiation, advertising, switching costs, and network externality, (vi) Vertical foreclosure and exclusion, (vii) Predatory behaviors, and (viii) Assessment of entry impediments. At each step to evaluate the elements of entry barriers, the main characteristics of telecommunications industry are explicitly reflected. The main findings of this paper can be directly used to clarify and improve the legal clauses on market competition assessment in telecommunication laws in Korea.